THE HAND-Y MAN:
Dr. Peter E. Bentivegna with his stuff.
Vol. XIX, No. 4, Fall 2011
Your Good Health Forum |
Forget those emergency pen-knife jobs you see in the movies. We’re talking about your basic operating room tracheotomy, insertion of a tube into the windpipe to ease your breathing.
Barring complications, the normal hospital stay is three to five days. But recovery time is generally a couple of weeks.
Many patients, with help, can manage at home. But if help is not available or you just feel more comfortable in a healthcare setting, what to do?
Well, one answer for this conundrum is now available at Mashpee Care and Rehabilitation Center where they’ve just announced the introduction of what Administrator Donald Schwarz describes as “the region’s first long-term care facility to offer this specialized service.”
In formalizing their tracheotomy care, Mashpee Rehab will have a respiratory therapist available around the clock. They have done this kind of work before, but now the entire staff has been recertified, Mr. Schwarz says.
“Now we’ll be able to care for patients who need more time making the transition from the hospital to the home,” he explains. “Hospital care is more intense and it’s for the short term. The beauty of a nursing home is that we can add a certain flexibility. And since we also provide skilled nursing, we can deal with other issues as well.”
THE HAND-Y MAN:
Dr. Peter E. Bentivegna with his stuff.
War may be too strong a term, but there is competition between full service hospitals and specialized private providers whom they charge with siphoning off candidates for many well-paying procedures. Hospitals maintain they need these clients to help balance all the low-reimbursement patients they are required to treat.
Cape Cod Healthcare even has bought up some of these practices, but now comes news of a new specialized surgery that has hung out a shingle in a new building in Mashpee.
That would be the Cape Cod Surgery Center in Mashpee on Route 28 where Dr. Peter E. Bentivegna has been providing hand and plastic surgery since January.
Dr. Bentivegna operates there only one day a week, seeing 12 to 15 patients, and so far his is the only name on the sign. But he has plans.
“Our goal is to become a destination center for cosmetic surgery,” he says and he’s currently working on adding an orthopedic specialist to his group. “Other surgeons are interested,” he added.
Meanwhile, Dr. Bentivegna also conducts office hours at the new facility on some days when he’s not operating and he continues to see patients with a heavy schedule at Cape Cod Plastic and Hand Surgeons in West Yarmouth. He also serves as a consultant at both Cape hospitals, Jordan Hospital in Plymouth and Nantucket Cottage Hospital.
Dr. Bentivegna, a board certified graduate of New York Medical College and a Cape resident for 19 years, says his new facility is fully accredited.
“We have wonderful hospitals here and they do well for what they do, but I’m really excited about our new facility and we’re giving the patient a true choice,” he said.
Cape Cod Healthcare has recruited two new plastic surgeons to replace the retiring Dr. Robert Yoo. Dr. Yoo’s retirement won’t take place until next year, but Doctors Seth R. Jones and Michael A. Loffredo already have moved to the Cape and joined his Hyannis practice.
Dr. Jones recently completed an Aesthetic Surgery Fellowship with an emphasis on body contouring at the Hunstad Center for Cosmetic Surgery in North Carolina. He did his residency in plastic surgery at the Medical College of Wisconsin and went to Medical School at the University of Nevada.
Dr. Loffredo recently completed a fellowship program in aesthetic and reconstructive breast surgery at the Center for Breast and Body Contouring in Michigan. He did his plastic surgery residency at the Medical College of Wisconsin and went to Medical School at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey.
Both surgeons will focus on microsurgical options for breast reconstruction.