By Michael Howell
Dr. Anthony Navone cut the ribbon last week at Marcus Daly Memorial Hospital’s new Cardiology Clinic.
The newly expanded, state-of-the-art facility is patient centered and equipped to provide quality, accessible, personalized healthcare. The facility is a total of 2,600 square feet and provides functional flow for patients, staff and physicians. It has a spacious waiting room featuring a television with adjustable speakers on the chairs, and the reception area is open and welcoming with a private registration space for patient confidentiality. The new clinic is located at 1200 Westwood Drive, inside the hospital and east of the Imaging Department. Entrance is through the main entrance of Marcus Daly Memorial Hospital.
The clinic has four exam rooms, an echocardiogram lab, a stress echocardiogram lab, an interpretation room, a nurses’ station, physician and supervisor offices, a private bathroom off the waiting room, private registration space and a cardiac rehab space.
An array of non-invasive cardiology services is provided including stress and resting echocardiograms, electrocardiograms, cardiac rehab and a pacer and defribrillator clinic, lab tests and blood work, event and holter monitors and consultative services for medical staff and emergency, and inpatient and intensive care patients.
The International Heart Institute, working in conjunction with St. Patrick Hospital in Missoula, has provided cardiologists to serve the Bitterroot Valley community a couple days a week at Marcus Daly Memorial Hospital for some time now. But Dr. Navone will be on duty at the new Cardiology Clinic five days a week working with Nurse Carmen Tomlinson and Medical Assistant Lindsey Hult. Registration and receptionists are Delona Irwin and Tiphini Campbell. All surgical procedures will still be conducted at the hospital in Missoula.
Dr. Navone hails from back east. Navone did his undergraduate study at Portland, New York and went to medical school in Buffalo, NY before beginning a 25-year career in Syracuse, NY, specializing in cardiology for the ast 18 years.
Dr. Navone said he and his brother, who worked as an oncologist in Syracuse, were coming out to Montana every summer for the last decade to hunt and fish.
“At one point it occurred to us that we loved the place so much we ought to move out here, so we did,” Navone said. His brother got a job in Kalispell and he got this job with the International Heart Institute and ended up in the Bitterroot. He thinks he got the better deal.
Navone said that his first three months on the job have been wonderful. One of his patients, Mike Gaudin of Victor, heartily agrees. Gaudin said that for over a decade he had been suffering from serious dizzy spells that would lead to falls.
“My daughter finally said I needed to see a doctor, so I came to see Dr. Navone,” said Gaudin. “He did some tests on me and was able to explain things very clearly in layman’s terms. He is extremely knowledgeable.” Gaudin said Dr. Navone was able to figure out that he was taking too much high blood pressure medicine.
“Within three days my problems were over,” said Gaudin, “and that’s after putting up with it for 10 years.”
For more information about the cardiology services provided at the Marcus Daly Cardiology Clinic in collaboration with the International Heart Institute of Montana, visit www.mdmh.org or call 375-4665.