Tour of western Oklahoma

Went on a little road trip today. I needed to do an emergency repair on the Kodak LS-75 digitizer at Mangum Community Hospital in far southwestern Oklahoma today. So I jumped in my yellow Toyota FJ cruiser, affectionately called my "Tonka Truck" by my wife, and headed out west on I-40 in 19 degree weather. BRR. Of course, after spending part of a winter in Minot, ND in minus 40 degree weather (actual temp - wind chill was minus 81) I figure 19 degrees is not all that bad.

Anyway, we had just installed a Kodak CR Classic in the old hospital at Sayre so I stopped by and met with Johnny Kiener, their Radiology Director and a long time friend. His son is a freshman at UCO while my son is a junior, plus they are both learning to fly airplanes. Sayre is building a nice new hospital and it was supposed to be completed in early December, but as normal plans have been delayed. Johnny decided to go ahead and install the CR in the old facility for now and then we will move it to the new facility when they open.

Sayre's new hospital nearing completion


Carestream installed the CR in Sayre's cramped x-ray room on Monday and they are doing application training on Friday. I just popped in at the new and old facility to make sure things were going well and work out a plan for moving it with the time comes. All the rad techs were excited to play with the new touch screen CR Classic and eager for training.

Carestream performed temporary install of CR Classic in Sayre's cramped x-ray room in old facility. We will be moving it to the new facility once it opens.


After Sayre I pointed the Toyota south for the short drive to Mangum. Boy, were they glad to see me. They had been couriering their films to Lawton every day for the past week and the cost was very high, plus the delay in getting reports made their physicians quite unhappy. Josh Pendegraft, the Radiology Director, had been trying to get his IT staff at their corporate office in Austin to approve InTelemed doing the digitizer repairs. Like lots of IT staff they instead delayed the decision, trying to find the absolute cheapest way to do the repairs. It took them three days to figure out they could maybe save $200 bucks by purchasing the computer themselves. Josh finally gave up and just called me with a PO yesterday, so I rounded up the necessary parts and was there the very next day and got their digitizer up, running properly and fully calibrated. At the same time I got it hooked up so they could print to their Agfa Drystar 3000 printer, allowing them to make copies of their x-ray films if needed. When I left they were busy scanning films and extremely happy that we got them back operational the very next day. That comes from stocking spare parts and having the knowledge to fix these digitizers right the first time.

Mangum Community Hospital


Leaving Magnum about 2:00 PM I decided to swing by Lawton and drop in on a potential customer. Spent a few minutes there going over our proposal and plans for a new CR, then up the HE Bailey turnpike for home. All told, about 350 miles, two very happy customers, one potentially new customer, and dinner with my wife at 6:00 pm. A good day.