GROWING UP: DOCTORS' PARK CONTINUES TO EXPAND

Doctors' Park is bursting at the seams.

Physically, the medical park can't expand much more. The specialists who flock to it have snapped up nearly every available lot.

But technologically, expansion of the services offered by Doctors' Park is limitless.

What started out as a one-stop shop for the area's medical needs has become one of the region's major health care centers and a model for international public health experts.

Doctors' Park, which was built in the early 1970s, is home to dozens of medical specialties, including surgery, radiology, pharmaceutical, orthopedics, cancer, family medicine, dental and orthodontia, optometry, cardiovascular, neurology, obstetrics and gynecology, prosthetics and plastic surgery.

The specialists do everything from checkups to screenings to surgeries.

"Cape Girardeau is a quality medical center between St. Louis and Memphis," said Dr. Thomas Sparkman, a family physician who has been involved with Doctors' Park since its inception more than 30 years ago. "All the specialties are represented."

Sparkman, who maintains an office at 35 Doctors' Park, recalls early plans for the park, which originally included a high-rise building, a motel for overnight patients and their families, a motel and a restaurant.

Location concerns

He said an early concern of planners was the park's location. Interstate 55 provides easy access for patients coming from the north and south, and other major roads, such as William Street, provide convenient access for those who live in Cape Girardeau.

"It's all about location, location, location," Sparkman said. "We have a blessing with the highway getting people to us with only a couple of little turns."

But the highways, which provide convenient access for patients, have fenced in Doctors' Park, which finds itself with little more room for physical expansion.

Doctors' Park administrator Sarah Holt said that when the facility was built, people considered its location to be somewhat rural.

"At the time the park went in, it was way out of town and in a big field," she said. "Now our only constraints are our physical constraints."

Dr. Mike Brown, president of Cape Radiology, 70 Doctors Park, said he likes the feel and the convenience of Doctors' Park, which is one reason his company recently constructed a brand new building on the campus.

"It's the largest concentration of doctors offices in town. All the specialties are represented; therefore it's a very convenient place to offer your services to the physicians and their patients," he said.

"There is still a demand for office space in Doctors' Park. It's compact. Specialties move back and forth among each other. Everything is close together."

Quick advances

Despite its physical constraints, minute-to-minute technological advances in the medical field coupled with specialists' desire to offer state-of-the-art services allow Doctors' Park to offer patients a multitude of constantly changing, ever-improving procedures.

For instance, the Cape Girardeau Surgical Clinic, 10 Doctors Park, recently began offering a stereotactic core biopsy basically a real-time mammogram, Holt said, and a procedure that was not previously available to patients.

The procedure, which is for women whose physicians recommend they have a breast biopsy based on the results of their mammograms, allows specialists to remove small samples of breast tissue using a hollow needle, which is precisely guided to the correct location using X-ray and computer coordinates.

"Stereotactic core biopsy is a revolutionary new alternative to surgical biopsy that allows safe, rapid and accurate detection of breast disease without the discomfort, risk of disfigurement and expense of surgery," Holt said.

And in 2000, Cape Radiology began offering a procedure known as CT cardiac scoring, which allows specialists to quickly and efficiently determine if a patient is at risk for coronary heart disease.

Patients, either by doctor- or self-referral, can have their heart and arteries scanned, and the results indicate any hardened calcium that has built up in the patients.

This, too, is a procedure that was not previously available to patients. But because of the clinics' desire to provide the latest medical advancements, patients from Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky and elsewhere can take advantage of the procedures.

Full networking

The park also has plans to become fully networked, allowing doctors to quickly transfer files, images and other patient information back and forth at cyber-speed.

"Physicians who appreciate cutting-edge technology will continue to be on the cutting edge in the next 10 years," Holt said. "Technology will be a huge part of our next 10 years in health care."

What seems to draw doctors to the park mostly, Holt said, is the convenience of being near other doctors. This also creates convenience for patients.

"Physicians in Doctors' Park have always been well respected, and I think there is a certain amount of respect that goes with having a location in Doctors' Park," she said.

Brown said he believes the next level for Doctors' Park is to improve its efficiency, part of which will come from the electronic sharing of information.

"I think it's had steady progress and development," he said. "Now we're full, essentially, and we have to find ways to improve our efficiency and services to the physicians and patients.

"We hope that, within this year, we will be able to offer some capability of moving images from our office to various doctors' offices by computer and probably by way of the Internet. Then Doctors' Park becomes seamless."