Tellica Imaging, an Intermountain Health company, has hit an incredible milestone — 100,000 high-quality scans — while saving patients nearly $12 million in medical imaging costs. Whether it’s a CT scan for $400 or an MRI for $600, patients know the cost upfront. Discover how Tellica provides affordable, accessible, and high-quality care for patients while focusing on innovation and excellence in radiology.
Dr. Torres’ mom worked at the VA in Loma Linda, California, as a lab supervisor. Dr. Torres’ job was to volunteer during her mom’s work hours, Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. She spent them doing whatever there was to do: making coffee, showing people around. These were the days before the electronic health record, so she’d cart around big stacks of charts in manila envelopes. The nurses encouraged her to learn phlebotomy – she could take a course with the community college. She got certified at age 16. Sometimes she’d just keep patients company. She learned how to shoot pool. Sometimes the jobs were more random. She’s now the OB Hospitalist director for our Southern Utah and Nevada region, overseeing physicians at the region’s two hospitals, which deliver more than 600 babies every month. The role involves some administrative work but also allows her to keep in practice, mostly in labor and delivery and some gynecological surgery. It’s what she loves, and it goes back to what she learned as a volunteer: The people matter most. “Sometimes somebody needs you to be a doctor,” she says. “Sometimes they just need you to listen. You never know what someone really needs until you take that time. That’s where you can make a difference. You don’t have to change the world. Just listen to that one person in front of you right now.”
As Intermountain Health caregivers, we are leaders in clinical excellence. Part of that excellence involves a keen awareness of what our patients say and how even offhand comments can lead to bigger discoveries.
Noah Nelson was showering after a workout when the symptoms struck: nausea, blurred vision, numbness in his lower arms. He called into work and went home to lie down. It was then he felt the most severe pain he’d ever felt – a piercing pain “like an ice pick shoved into my chest.” He went back to urgent care, this time at Intermountain Medical Center (IMED) in Murray, Utah. The team there, too, thought a heart attack seemed unlikely, but they administered an EKG just to be sure. The results were so off-the charts the team thought the machine might have malfunctioned. They got another machine and tried again. The results were clear: Noah was in ST-elevation myocardial infarction, or STEMI. After consulting with Dr. Harrison and the cardiology team, the urgent care team activated the STEMI protocol. An ambulance rushed Noah to the emergency room at IMED, and then quickly from there to the cardiac catheterization lab. Dr. Harrison met him there. Dr. Harrison’s work that day doubtless saved Noah’s life, but what stands out to Dr. Harrison is that, had it not been for the work of the entire team, from urgent care to the emergency room, none of it could have happened at all.
Japanese train conductors use a practice called Shisha Kanko, or pointing and calling, to keep passengers safe. The widely studied point and call method has shown that using our bodies and vocalizing our repetitive tasks reduces human error by 85%. After experiencing mislabeled specimens, the American Fork Hospital endoscopy team in American Fork, Utah began practicing point and call to make sure every specimen is labeled correctly. Learn how they transformed their workflow, eliminating errors and enhancing patient care.
Intermountain Health’s vast network of 68,000+ caregivers is a tapestry of talent and dedication. With so many roles, some departments may surprise you. When you think about healthcare, you might not immediately picture the team that maintains our helicopters. But even in this era of automation, it's dedicated caregivers who keep everything running smoothly. Each department reveals the diverse and inspiring work happening behind the scenes. We hope you'll enjoy getting to know these teams and learning about their dedication, wisdom, and passion for helping people live the healthiest lives possible.
When five-year-old McKinley's cartwheel turned into surgery and an overnight stay at Cedar City Hospital in Cedar City, Utah, she decided to turn her injury into a donation that would help future pediatric patients at Cedar City. Learn more about McKinley's motivation to inspire a mission of kindness in the article below.
We are celebrating National Donate Life Month with a big milestone in the adult organ transplant program – the average wait for a liver is less than a month and a kidney transplant has one of the shortest wait-times in the nation, averaging less than a year. In addition, Intermountain Health recently became the first transplant center in the west to join the 34 Lives program, where difficult to allocate kidneys are assessed by a new technique allowing surgeons a chance to rescue kidneys that would otherwise be unused. By embracing new cutting-edge technology, the Intermountain Transplant Program has seen a 385% growth in liver transplants from 2018 to 2024, making it the third-fastest growing program in the nation with better than national outcomes. “The success of Intermountain Health’s transplant program is due to all the passionate caregivers in the OR and in the clinic,” said Jean Botha, MD, medical director of Intermountain Health’s abdominal transplant program and Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital’s pediatric transplant program. “But it’s also due to the very gracious donors and their families, for saying, ‘Yes,’ to organ donation.”
Dr. Swink had no intention of becoming an oncologist. In her entrance interview for medical school, she remembers saying she was open to anything – she just knew she wouldn’t be going into oncology. Her mother went through a bout of cancer when she was a teenager. It just seemed too sad. By residency, she figured she’d be an internist. She got her bachelor’s in biomedical engineering, and internal medicine appealed to her desire to understand not just the parts, but the whole of the system. “But in my times of deeper reflection,” she said, “I realized that the patients I enjoyed and remembered most, that I was most excited to get up at 3 a.m. and round on – they were all cancer patients.” She wasn’t the only one to notice: When it came time to pursue a fellowship, her husband pointed out that she clearly had a special affinity for patients with cancer. She agreed. Oncology it was. It was just, she says, “the right amount of nerdy.” She now serves as medical director of Oncology at St. Mary’s Regional Hospital in Grand Junction, Colorado, where she’s been since 2019. “In oncology, healing does not always mean cure,” she said. “Healing means helping a person live who they are, whatever the diagnosis and the treatment regimen. Helping them find their best selves, maintain their dignity, their hope, their love, so they can continue to be the author of their own story.”
At Intermountain Health, we are making significant strides in reducing our environmental impact, showcasing our dedication to sustainability and responsible stewardship. With a focus on sustainable practices—which impact the health of both our planet and our physical wellbeing—our amazing caregivers are already demonstrating their commitment to our 2025 Earth Month theme: Healthy Earth, Healthy Body. If you would like to learn more about our Environmental Health and Sustainability work, visit the link below.
