Hospital News

Amy Kasarda, a nurse in Alton Memorial Hospital's Women's Health and Childbirth Center, is this year's AMH nominee to the BJC Health Hall of Fame. Amy has used Weight Watchers to help her lose more than 100 pounds since the summer of 2017.

Alton Memorial Hospital and BJC Medical Group are expanding their presence in Madison County with a new medical office building that will soon be under construction in Bethalto. The building will replace the Family Physicians of Bethalto office and will be located on the south side of Route 140, just east of its current location. At nearly 9,000 square feet, the new structure will be four times the size of the current office. It will be able to accommodate five providers; the current space has room for only two.

A few days of renovation work with no disruption to patient care have resulted in a spruced-up Alton Memorial Convenient Care.

Penny Krause has had quite a year at Alton Memorial Hospital. The manager of Respiratory Therapy, the Sleep Lab and Neurodiagnostics worked hard to get the Sleep Lab accredited and was also a key figure as AMH transitioned to the EPIC electronic medical record system. She also learned how to fly an airplane and became a pilot.

Sept. 12, 2017, was a life-changing day that Bill Burton of East Alton will never forget. A limb-saving day, to be precise.The date marked his initial visit to the Alton Memorial Hospital Wound Care and Hyperbaric Medicine Center, beginning the process to save his right leg from amputation.

Don and Dot Lemm are very thankful for the medical help that Don received from Alton Memorial Hospital after suffering a heart attack at his home March 25. But just as impressive to Dot was an underrated skill that EMT Amy Green displayed. “Amy did a tremendous job driving the ambulance, because there are so many people who really don’t make an effort to get out of the way,” Dot Lemm said. “She had to navigate some pretty tight spaces sometimes, but she got us there quickly.”

Joanna Krajewski is right-handed and never gave much thought to how important her left arm was – until she broke her left elbow in a fall earlier this year. But thanks to several sessions with Callie Feldman, an occupational therapist at Alton Memorial’s Human Motion Institute who specializes in hand therapy, Joanna is regaining strength and mobility.

Breast cancer treatment is taking another step forward at Alton Memorial Hospital with the addition of a prone breast board. Funded by the AMH White Cross Auxiliary, the prone breast board assists in providing comfortable and reproducible patient positioning for treatments.

Resident-directed care is the trend inside skilled nursing communities, and Jennifer Popp is looking to amplify that as she takes over as administrator at Eunice Smith Home.