Welcome to ZZ Sumter Regional Hospital

State of the Hospital: Vote Early, Often for Sumter Regional in Siemens MRI Competition

Posted 11/01/2007
By David Seagraves

It's said that even the worst tragedies contain seeds of hope, optimism and revival. We've certainly found that to be true in the wake of the March 1 tornado that destroyed our community's hospital — first, in the universal community support we've received to rebuild the hospital; second, in the overwhelming SPLOST (Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax) vote that will help fund our recovery effort; and now in the community's support for our effort to win a new MRI.

In case you haven't heard (and I'm starting to think everybody has), Siemens Medical Solutions is coming out with a brand-new version of their MRI, and they have decided to give one away to a small hospital in America as part of a promotional contest to introduce their new product.

It turns out we very much need one, since our old MRI (which was actually fairly new at the time) was crushed in the March 1 tornado.

The contest required interested hospitals to create a short video and post it to a special web site www.winanmri.com), where people could view the various videos and vote for the one they felt demonstrated the greatest need. When we received a letter in the mail from Siemens about the contest, we felt immediately that our story was one that would generate a great deal of interest, and that we had a real chance of winning this vital piece of medical equipment. We have since learned that this particular MRI will retail for around $800,000 and is just as powerful as other competing MRI machines that have been selling for about $1.5 million.

Producing the video internally, however, was a challenge. Mark Grimes, who heads up our education and training operations, took it on and got a crash course in video production. He purchased a video editing software program, spent a couple of days learning to use it, and then most of a week actually producing the video. He did an on-camera interview with me and then cobbled that together with security camera footage from the night of storm, post-tornado photography and other images — and even laid in a sound track!

It was such a difficult task that Mark wasn't able to complete the video, which he titled “Blown Away,” until mid-day on the third day of the competition (Wednesday, Oct. 24). It was, however, well worth the wait — as the contest results so far demonstrate!

To date, videos have been submitted by about 50 hospitals from all around the country. When ours was posted to the website around 8 p.m. Oct. 24, more than 20 hospitals had already posted videos and had begun to build up some pretty good vote totals.

By the end of that first day, we only had about 60 votes for our video and the leader had more than 8,000, but we were just starting to get the word out. By Friday morning, we were up to 13th place and about 7,500 votes behind the leader. By midday on Saturday, we were in second place, about 600 votes behind the leader, and we took over first place around 4 p.m. Saturday.

To our amazement, this voting pattern has continued unchecked — and may even have accelerated. As of Wednesday morning, we have over 41,000 votes and have nearly twice as many votes as our nearest competitor.

We believe our success so far is due to three factors. First, we have a very compelling story that is really hard to vote against. Second, we know that the residents of Americus and Sumter County are very strong and will never quit. And third, we are finding that we have a tremendous network of friends who have friends who have other friends. In the medical field, “going viral” isn't a good thing — but it is on the Web. And that seems to be what's happened with “Blown Away.”

This activity is a little hard to track, but we know that word has spread like wildfire from Sumter County, across the state, throughout the country, and apparently even internationally. We're told by one friend of the hospital that she's appealed to her fellow members in two Bruce Springsteen fan message boards and has gotten positive responses from the UK and elsewhere. Our friends at Georgia's other hospitals are going www.winanmri.com to support our efforts, and the local Chamber of Commerce has sent out an appeal to other business organizations across the state. We know that many of you have already voted, and we thank you. It is truly humbling to be the recipient of so much good will.

With such a large lead, it's tempting to relax and rest on our laurels, but we will not quit, just like we know that you won't quit. This is going to be a long campaign (the voting will continue through Dec. 31) and I'm confident our counterparts at other competing hospitals are already organizing campaigns to try to overtake us.

Fortunately, this is a campaign where the old saying “vote early and often” is actually legal and encouraged. The Web site will accept one vote per day per computer. I vote every day from my home and at the office, and I strongly encourage you to do the same.

With your continued support, I'm confident we'll be able to grow our lead and bring home this much-needed new MRI for our community.

Thank you for your enduring patience and continued support as we work to return the healthcare services that you deserve, provided by friends and neighbors who care about you and your health.

And remember: vote early and often at www.winanmri.com.

US Patent Numbers 7,720,998 B2, 7,836,207