News & Events

Gateway Clinic Imaging in Moose Lake

During the past three years, Gateway Clinic and Mercy Hospital provided joint imaging services at the clinic and hospital in Moose Lake. This partnership allowed the clinic and hospital to provide imaging services together, rather than duplicating services. Unfortunately, federal laws that allow these partnerships changed on October 1, 2009. This change required Gateway Clinic and Mercy Hospital to discontinue providing the services jointly, and each entity had to return to providing imaging services separately. 

Although this change was not our preference, Gateway Clinic looked at the change as an opportunity to further enhance the imaging services we provide in a clinic setting. Gateway clinic now offers the following imaging services in our Moose Lake Gateway Clinic: x-ray, obstetrical ultrasounds, general ultrasounds, echocardiograms, stress echocardiograms, and bone densitometry. Besides investing in new imaging equipment that provides our patients with the newest technology, we have also invested in a PACS system for imaging storage. PACS stands for Picture Archiving and Communication System. With the exception of bone densitometry, all of our other imaging services are exams that take a picture or video. This picture or video is then stored and viewed electronically for the best quality, storage, and communication of imaging results. We are also investing in some minor remodeling to the clinic imaging space so our patients feel relaxed and comfortable when having an imaging exam. 

Although we had to discontinue the imaging partnership with Mercy Hospital, the existing imaging partnership we have with Pine Medical Center, and our two clinics in Hinckley and Sandstone, is able to continue operations. That partnership in Pine County meets a rural exception to this law, which is not met in Carlton County. Through the partnership with Pine Medical Center, we provide x-ray services in our Hinckley clinic and the following imaging services at our Sandstone clinic: x-ray, obstetrical ultrasounds, cardiolytes, and mammography.

Eric Nielsen

Administrator