Milwaukee VA unveils state-of-the-art Endoscopy Lab to enhance Veterans' health care

Also known as the endoscopy lab, the unit hosts a variety of medical procedures, including colonoscopies and endoscopies.

The new unit on the seventh floor (Room 7200) provides more room for procedures and for pre-operative procedures and post-operative recovery. It also gives staff more office and meeting space and relieves a burden placed on the operating rooms and other facilities on the second floor, which formerly housed the unit.

“We’re really stepping into as modern of a facility as we can,” said Dr. Zach Smith, director of endoscopy and the associate section chief for gastroenterology. “We’re doing very high-level procedures at the VA. The provider expertise is here, and now we have the physical space to optimize our technology. 

“We are delivering … the absolute highest level of endoscopic care available, and the opportunity to do it in this new physical space is something we’re all looking forward to. We’re excited to hit the ground running.”

One of the biggest benefits, Smith said, will be better patient flow from pre-op to procedure to recovery.

In the old space, there were only two pre-op rooms, which created a bottleneck, he said.

“When you have three or four procedure rooms running and only two people able to be fully pre-oped and ready to go, you can only turn the room over so fast,” he said.

The new space has eight rooms dedicated to pre-op and recovery.

“That’s going to be a major boost to our efficiency,” he said. “It's going to allow us to turn rooms over more quickly … and to stay on schedule more regularly, which is obviously a benefit for the Veterans.”

The rooms are also bigger, meaning they can better accommodate the necessary staff and technology.

Smith noted that in the old space, some equipment was on carts, which weren’t ideal ergonomically, while the fixed endoscopy equipment was not movable.

Now, “everything is on fully rotatable booms that allow us to really adapt to any procedure,” Smith said.

The old rooms would also get crowded pretty quickly, which had staff nearly bumping into each other during procedures, according to nurse manager Christine Ogreovich.

“In our old space, we were all on top of each other,” she said.

Dr. Kavita Ratarasarn, pulmonary section chief, agreed.

“It was very crowded,” she said. “We usually had two or three carts that are part of a procedure, and any time we needed to shift, everyone had to move. If you needed to walk across the room, almost everyone else had to slide somewhere else.”

Also in the old space, some procedures involved adjacent areas of the second floor, requiring intricate coordination of patient flow. In addition, Ratarasarn and her team had to use operating rooms for robotic bronchoscopies because the equipment wouldn’t fit in the old rooms.

In addition, technicians often had to go to different departments — and even different floors in the hospital — to get what they needed, according to Renee Jaeckle, medical instrument technician.

The new space eliminates all those hurdles.

“It will be a lot more organized,” Jaeckle said.

“Having everything located in the same physical space — and having the team in the same space instead of spread across different departments — will increase the efficiency of the team” and decrease the likelihood of coordination problems, Ratarasarn said, noting that the new space allows for expansion of newer procedures.

The move has been a long time coming. Program Manager Katy Charlton said the project began five years ago.

“I don’t think you can completely understand how excited we are,” Charlton said.

“We have really outgrown the (old) space, and I am really excited to see how this will improve efficiency,” Ogrezovich said. “It’s nice to see the work environment match the care we provide.”

“This is a new chapter. We’re starting fresh,” Charlton said. “We have our own little nest in the corner, and we all get to actually be there together, which is great. I know the staff and patients will appreciate the new space.”