2018: A Year in Review
1/24/2019
It is hard for me to believe a year has already passed since I took over as CEO of Urology Centers of Alabama. For over 60 years, UCA has provided state-of-the-art, patient-centered urologic care with integrity and compassion. We successfully accomplished that again in 2018 and have some exciting new things happening in 2019 that I would like to share with you.
As I reflect on 2018, we commissioned our newest piece of equipment last January in the UCA Cancer Center. UCA invested in one of the most advanced pieces of equipment to treat our Prostate Cancer patients, the Halycon Linear Accelerator. This machine is the first of its kind in the southeast and only the 16th installed in the United States. The new machine offers more accuracy and shorter treatment times for our patients undergoing radiation therapy.
In September 2018, we opened the UCA Women’s Center and added Dr. Ali Parden to our team of physicians. While UCA has always treated women, we now have a dedicated space with physicians specifically trained to treat female urological issues.
In 2018, UCA continued to grow our team of Physician Assistants and Nurse Practitioners, bringing our total to 10. These providers work in surgery with our Physicians and see patients in many of our offices. Growth in this area continues to allow UCA to meet the needs of our patients in a timely manner as many of our Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants are now having their own clinics to evaluate and treat the urological needs of our patients.
As we move into 2019, you will see some changes with offices relocating and expanding. Our St. Vincent’s East location will be moving just down the street to the Pilot Building. We will open this location in February 2019. We have also just started construction to expand our Alabaster office. This expansion will provide more room for our front office staff, create dedicated exam rooms for our Physician Assistant to have clinic, and provide a full-service lab area for our patients. This expansion will be completed in April 2019. Finally, we are finalizing plans now to also expand our Grandview office. The new expansion at Grandview will create more exam rooms and allow up to three providers to see patients at one time.
Our Homewood location also recently underwent a renovation of our lobby area. As part of the renovation, we also installed Clearwave Kiosk to facilitate patient check-in. I would encourage you to check out our blog post about this new technology which you will be seeing at other locations in 2019 as we move or complete our expansion projects.
Finally, I want to commend our physicians and staff on the excellent service and treatment we provide to patients each day. We monitor our patient satisfaction through surveys. I monitor these reports monthly and the practice and physicians consistently score above the national average in all categories. We value your feedback and encourage you to always reach out if you have suggestions on how we can improve. In addition, we would also encourage you to leave comments regarding your positive experiences on our Facebook page or leave Google Review.
As always please feel free to reach out to me or any of our management team if we can be of assistance. Our contact information can be found at https://www.urologycentersalabama.com/staff.html.
Respectfully,
Jason Biddy
CEO of Urology Centers of Alabama