Except that - in the middle of our vicarious living through our children's summer camps and vacations to the grandparents - we pause to recognize that July is a dark anniversary for MRI.

It was July in 2001 when Michael Colombini died in a horrible MRI tragedy. Next month, in our second fully public issue of the MRI Newsletter in 2005, we will again focus on safety issues and how facility design directly impacts patient care, safety and throughput.

This coming month we'll also be spending our days preparing for our presentations to the American Healthcare Radiology Administrators annual meeting in August. Next month we will be in San Antonio, presenting twice on issues of MRI suite design, including a focus on 3.0T systems and the new high-field open systems.

For those of you attending AHRA, we invite you to attend one of our presentations entitled "MRI Suite Safety Challenges, Including Seamless Upgrades from 1.5 to 3.0 Tesla." We very much hope to see you there.

For those who won't be attending, we sincerely hope that you will have an opportunity to attend one of our future presentations, perhaps our program on Universal Imaging Suite Design for the National Symposium on Healthcare Design in September.

As always, we hope that you will contact us if you have any questions about anything you read in the newsletter, or if we can be of any assistance to you.

Robert Junk, AIA, AHRA
Junk Architects, PC

Invite Your Friends & Colleagues.

Join Us In August At AHRA!

"Excellent presentation - very informative - need more technical courses such as this one!"

"Technically robust, well presented."

"The best course of the entire conference! Do have more like this."

Click below to be taken to
www.AHRA.com (annual meeting page)

This year's presentations are being graciously sponsored by the new MR-Safe fire extinguisher, Cleanguard^® FE13NM by Ansul, with additional underwriting from the SafeScan^® family of MRI suite ferromagnetic detectors from Mednovus.

Look For Web-Based Seminars From AuntMinnie.

We are currently collaborating with AuntMinnie.com to develop web-based mini-seminars on crucial topics for MRI suite safety and design. Look for an announcement in an upcoming newsletter with information on how you can participate in one of our workshops from the comfort of your desk.

MRI Newsletter - Article Archive Is Now On Line!

We're pleased to announce that we have the archive of previous MRI Newsletter articles available. Click here to see all the articles that are available.

While the archive index is available to everyone, only subscribers will be able to access the full text of the articles.

A Shocking Story Of Static Discharge:
A Tale Of Unexpected Coil Damage.
By Robert Junk, AIA, AHRA and Tobias Gilk

Perhaps it's a 'little boy' thing, but we each remember times in our youth when we'd shuffle our stocking feet through deep carpet and run through the house trying to zap siblings or unsuspecting parents with a static electric charge. As games go, it didn't last too long as all you had to show for all your effort was a horrible case of static-induced bed-head and mild carpet burns on your feet. It wasn't until very recently that the whole idea of static electricity again raised the level of wonder near where it was when each of us was seven. It all happened when a client of ours called because one of their coils kept failing and they had just received a report from the MRI system vendor attributing the damage to static electric discharge.

Click here to be taken to the full article.

Interim Trailer Leasing:
The Hidden Cost In MRI Suite Renovations
By Tobias Gilk

Many a facility has penciled their numbers to make a business case for purchasing a new one or two million dollar magnet. Imagine their horror when the construction for the proposed new magnet, what is to become the crown jewel, is discovered to require hundreds of thousands of additional dollars in the form of interim trailer leasing. More than once this has sent managers back to their pro forma to find a way to support an interim magnet lease.

Yours may be like many MRI facilities that were designed and built prior to our current run of double-digit utilization growth and, at the time, the facility could never foresee a day when they'd need two MRIs. And when that day came, they thought surely there'd never be a need for three! Renovating or expanding MRI facilities can cause disruption to patient access and construction interference. These interferences sometimes require temporarily shutting down some or all of the MRIs during the renovation.

Click here to be taken to the full article.

AHRA Preview:
A Sneak-Peek At Our Forthcoming Presentation
By Tobias Gilk

Last year we were honored to have been both well attended and very highly rated by those who saw our presentation in Boston at the 2004 AHRA annual meeting. This year we hope to have the opportunity to speak with every radiology administrator with an interest in MRI, either at one of our two presentations or at any of the social activities throughout the week. This year we have updated our facility safety information and will be showing real-world examples from our 'how not to build an MRI suite' bad-design file. We will also be featuring facility planning, design and construction information on both 3.0 Tesla (T) MRI systems and the new collection of high-field open MRIs. Here are some of the highlights of the upcoming sessions...

Click here to be taken to the full article.

Articles In The Works

• Hitting The Ceiling Over HIPAA-Required Walls
• Hyperthermia: Another Interventional Application
• Access Control Devices: Keeping Zone III Secure
• Four Years After The Tragedy: The Wake Of An MRI Death.
• Double Down: Raising The Stakes Of MRI Safety

We Love Hearing From You!

Junk Architects, PC

802 Broadway - 5th Floor

Kansas City, MO 54105

816-472-7722