Vanderbilt Wilson County Hospital (VWCH) has added an epilepsy monitoring unit (EMU), with a neurologist onsite seeing patients in the hospital.
“This new unit is the latest investment in our ongoing commitment to advance health care services for the citizens of the Wilson region. Epilepsy is one of the most common neurologic disorders. Having the capacity to care for patients closer to their homes is important for everyone involved,” said C. Wright Pinson, MBA, MD, Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Chief Health System Officer for Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
The announcement comes following VWCH’s designation as a provisional Level 3 Trauma Center in May and an Interventional Cardiology program instituted in January that began seeing patients five days a week in September.
“We continue to expand our service offerings at VWCH to meet the needs of everyone in Wilson County. Just this year, we have added interventional cardiology, level 3 trauma, and now inpatient neurology coverage,” said VWCH President Scott McCarver.
“With our new EMU, we will be serving patients from across the region and will have the opportunity to provide the outstanding care we pride ourselves in. I am very grateful for the partnership of the Department of Neurology to provide this service in our community,” he added.
The four-bed EMU will perform EEG-video monitoring, allowing neurologists to record seizures in order to determine the best treatment options, according to Junaid Humayun, MD, assistant professor of Neurology.
Humayun, a board-certified neurologist, with a two-year fellowship training in clinical neurophysiology and advance epilepsy, will be the main neurology provider for Wilson County, covering all EMU patients and taking inpatient neurology consults.
He will be treating patients for conditions including epilepsy, stroke, multiple sclerosis (MS), Parkinson’s disease and neurological emergencies, monitoring EMU patients in the morning and seeing inpatient neurology consults in the afternoon.
Wilson County did not previously have a neurologist onsite, so those patients were sent to the main campus in Nashville.
“Establishing an EMU is something very unique and takes effort to materialize the concept and build one, and we are fortunate to have established the state-of-the-art EMU at Wilson County Hospital, which will be serving a big population in this part of state,” Humayun said.
The other provider will be Jonah Fox, MD, who just finished his epilepsy two-year fellowship at Vanderbilt.
“Our objective is to provide care in our local communities closer to home,” said Travis Capers, President, Vanderbilt Regional Community Hospitals. “We are excited to continue to expand care in Wilson County and surrounding areas.”