About Progress 2016
The titles and rankings seem to come in droves each year.
From health and wealth to education and youth, most Forsyth residents know the county is at the forefront of north Georgia and the state in various factors that help shape quality of life.
These factors — which residents embrace and have come to expect — carry their share of numbers. Indeed, politicians and others are fond of touting such statistics.
With that in mind, the staff of the Forsyth County News contacted government and school officials, business owners and pub-lic safety personnel to compile some interesting and easy-to-read figures from the past year.
Northside Hospital-Forsyth by the numbers
231 – Beds
2,600 – Employees
2,400 – Physicians
429,000 – Patient visits
2,863 – Births
55,965 – ER visits
10,255 – Surgeries
Note: Figures are from 2015.
Follow @NorthsideHosp on social media, and for more information visit northside.com.
To read the entire Progress 2016 edition, click here.
Northside Hospital is one of the most respected and fastest growing health care organizations in the Southeast, and Northside Hospital-Forsyth is no different.
In the 14 years since Northside purchased the Cumming hospital, it has seen tremendous growth in services and its presence in the community. That growth doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon.
Today, the 1-million-square-foot Northside Hospital-Forsyth medical campus has more than 2,600 employees and 2,400 physicians.
It includes the 231-bed hospital, a Women’s Center, an advanced surgery tower and four medical office buildings.
The hospital saw more than 400,000 patient visits last year across a full range of medical services.
Construction is under way on three additional floors to the hospital, which will bring its inpatient bed count to 247 and the total number of beds, including observation, to 330. These additional floors should be operational in October.
The hospital continues to expand and enhance its services to keep up with the growing health care needs of the community. New advances in technology enable Northside to lead medical innovation and focus on the best possible patient care.
Cancer patients have access to leading-edge care with Gamma Knife® Perfexion™ technology, now available at Northside Hospital-Forsyth’s newly renovated and expanded Cancer Center.
The technology offers the latest treatment for malignant and benign brain tumors and functional and vascular disorders.
For patients with brain tumors, this means they can undergo a non-invasive form of brain surgery without surgical risks, a long hospital stay or subsequent rehabilitation.
“The addition of Gamma Knife® Perfexion™ unit to the Neuro Oncology program at the Northside Hospital Cancer Institute is a significant benefit to hundreds of patients requiring treatment of both benign and malignant brain lesions in the north Georgia and metro Atlanta area,” said Peter Possert, medical director of Northside’s Gamma Knife Program.
Northside Hospital-Forsyth’s new Surgical Care Center is scheduled to open in May. The center will have two dedicated, women-only GYN and breast care operating rooms, offering patients privacy and comfort.
Northside also leads in surgical care, performing more minimally invasive robotic-assisted procedures than any other hospital in the Southeast.
The hospital recently became the first hospital in Georgia to use the Medrobotics Flex® Robotic System. It is the first and only robot-assisted surgical platform with a flexible scope cleared by the FDA for use during transoral procedures (performed via mouth).
The technology employs a unique, flexible, robotic scope that precisely moves through the body’s natural twists and turns. Once the surgeon reaches the desired vantage point, the scope becomes rigid to form a stable surgical platform.
Sanjay Athavale, ENT surgeon, performed the first surgery at Northside using the new technology.
“The throat is not a straight line,” Athavale said. “The flexibility of the camera with the working arms at the end allows me to access everything from the patient’s lips to the larynx with much greater ease.”
The Northside Hospital Heart and Vascular Institute’s board-certified cardiologists and vascular surgeons, working alongside cardiovascular trained nurses and technologists, are experts in diagnosing and treating heart disease.
The local hospital was the first in metro Atlanta to earn Advanced Certification in Heart Failure from The Joint Commission.
It also earned the American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology Foundation’s Get With The Guidelines® 2015 Heart Failure Gold-Plus Quality Achievement Award for the diagnosis and treatment of heart failure patients.
“These advanced certifications provide us the opportunity to highlight the exceptional heart failure care Northside Hospital-Forsyth provides,” said Patricia Tyson, director of the Northside Hospital Heart and Vascular Institute.
“I couldn’t be more proud of our team of physicians, nurses and staff, who continually strive to advance our care even further each and every day.”
Northside Hospital-Forsyth is committed to balancing clinical excellence with high-quality, compassionate care.
In addition to the advanced certifications in heart failure, the hospital has been recognized by The Joint Commission for health care excellence with specialty certification in treating pneumonia, hip/knee replacement and stroke patients, and the hospital’s Bariatric Surgery Program received recognition from the American College of Surgeons’ Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery Accreditation and Quality Improvement Program.