When flood waters ravaged Ohio's Columbus Regional Hospital in June, neighboring community hospital St. Francis in Indianapolis opened its doors to accommodate their oncology staff and patients after normal working hours.

As a result of the disaster, the hospital's entire basement was flooded, affecting many critical functions including the hospital's power source. Six to eight inches of water flooded the hospital's first floor and the location of two PRIMUS™ linear accelerators from Siemens. The machines deliver radiation treatment to cancer patients.

But, in only one week, physicists and physicians from both hospitals, worked with Siemens to smoothly transition patients' treatment plans from the two flood-damaged PRIMUS units at Columbus Regional, to the two ONCOR™ systems at St. Francis. Because of the similarity of the two machines, the staff at Columbus Regional could literally "pick up their practice" and take it to St. Francis.
St. Francis currently treats its own patients during normal daytime hours, then Columbus Regional patients are transported to the facility for treatment from 4:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Columbus Regional leases the St. Francis facility so its own physician group can continue treating patients.

Siemens Service staff are working evening shifts to get the Columbus staff up and running. Columbus Regional hopes to be fully functional again in November.

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