18 Jan 2018 Baptist Health offers BHeart Healthy Screenings

by Donna Lampkin Stephens

With February the month of hearts, the BHeart Healthy Screenings at Baptist Health Medical Center in Conway offer a good opportunity for residents of the 501 to take a proactive role in their own heart health — and beyond.

For $99, the BHeart Healthy Screening includes a CT calcium score to look for signs of blocked heart arteries; laboratory blood tests including a lipid panel for cholesterol and triglycerides and diabetes screening; electrocardiogram to check for any previous heart damage; carotid artery ultrasound screening to check for stroke probability, abdominal aorta aneurysm ultrasound screening; blood pressure evaluation and body mass index, in addition to an overview of results with a cardiovascular specialist.

Dr. Bernard Gojer leads the screenings in Conway.

“This goes along with the idea that as a hospital system, we want to try to be preventative,” said Gojer, who joined Baptist Health’s Heart Institute from Texas. “We want to help focus the community on disease prevention and be a medical home for the community.

“We want to try to keep our community as healthy as possible and try to prevent potentially catastrophic events by diagnosing disease before symptoms are readily apparent. We want to promote well-being and wellness and make people aware of conditions that are silent killers.”

While the classic risk factors for coronary artery disease — age, male, smoking, hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes and family history — signify a person at higher risk for plaque buildup, such screenings give a fuller picture.

According to a press release, Gojer has more than 20 years of experience practicing interventional and general cardiology, nuclear cardiology, echocardiography, cardiovascular CT and vascular medicine and holds five board certifications. His expertise includes interventional and general cardiology, peripheral vascular disease, nuclear cardiology, trans-thoracic echo and trans-esophageal echo, vascular ultrasound, arrhythmia/pace maker/defibrillator management, congestive heart failure management, lipid management and preventive cardiology and CT calcium scoring and coronary CT angiography. 

Gojer said a higher CT calcium score would indicate more plaque within the arteries and the greater the risk for a heart attack or stroke over the next 10 years.

But the numbers themselves are relative.

“If you’re 90, we would expect you to have a lot of calcium in your heart,” he said. “If you were 40, we would not expect you to have any calcium in your heart. At 40 if you have a little bit, that’s a lot for your age, so you’re headed down a pathway of developing plaque earlier in life, and we would treat you more aggressively and stratify you to a group that’s likely to have more problems.

“The entire purpose of this is to try to identify people at risk long before any heart attacks or other symptoms. We would then treat them more aggressively, work on lowering their cholesterol, making lifestyle changes, diet and exercise, in hopes of trying to prevent a heart attack.”

America’s insurance-based healthcare model, though, is less likely to stress prevention, the idea being not to spend money until a problem exists.

“What we have done at Baptist Health is say we’re going to provide this service at a very low cost that covers the cost of providing the service,” Gojer said. “We believe there is value in early detection and screening, and we’ve cut the insurance companies out of it.”

Baptist Health isn’t the only hospital to offer such screenings. Gojer said he was involved with a similar program in Texas; other programs also exist in the 501.

“But in order to run this kind of program, you have to have a sponsor willing to do it,” he said. “There is no profit in this. It basically requires a commitment from the hospital doing it to provide a screening program for early disease detection and to promote wellness in the community.

“I’m a big believer in this.”

According to baptist-health.com, BHMC-Conway “is a faith-based, state-of-the-art facility offering an integrated healing environment for the care and comfort of patients and families.”

The 260,000-square foot facility includes 111 beds and eight operating rooms.

BHeart Healthy screenings began in April 2017. 

Kelly Hanks, marketing manager for Baptist Health, said the facility had had a full roster of patients for every screening date thus far, and it had held a special screening date for the Vilonia Fire Department.

“The captain wanted to offer screenings to all his men to make sure they were in good shape and being preventative with possible risks and diseases,” she said. 

Gojer arrived at Baptist prior to the opening of the Conway facility. 

“I came here because I wanted to join the Baptist Health network, and I like the area,” he said. “I was excited by the opportunity to start a new program and to work at this new hospital.”

He said nearly a year in, he was pleased with how the screenings had gone in Conway.

“It’s fantastic,” he said. “It’s been well received. There’s been a universal positive response. Everybody who’s come in has been very pleased with the process. It takes a couple of hours and provides a lot of valuable information. People get their test results right away. Afterward, they get to speak to a physician for 10 to 15 minutes to go over the results, and they get a folder with all the test results they can take back to their family doctor.” 

To get the screenings, people should be between 30 and 85 without a previous diagnosis of coronary artery disease. Gojer said 40 would be a reasonable age for a first screening, with five-year intervals for follow up typical.

To schedule a BHeart Healthy screening or for more information, call the Baptist Health HealthLine at 1.888.BAPTIST or 501.227.8478.