Mercyhealth In Rockford Employs Emergency Service Usually Only Seen In Major Cities

What's Up, Doc? is a weekly health segment on WROK sponsored by MercyHealth. Each week they highlight a different doctor/healthcare professional to come on our show and talk to us about their specialty. It has turned into one of our favorite segments. All of our doctors have exhibited a "human" side that people don't always get to see with their physicians. We encourage you to check out some of our past episodes here. We've done about 30 of these segments highlighting everything from Lyme disease to hernia repair to finding a health care plan and everything else in between. We've learned a lot and hope you can too.

We love all our guests on What's Up, Doc? but some of our favorites have been those from the emergency field. Not only is their job fascinating, but they tend to be great storytellers as well.

That definitely held true for this week's guest, Dr. Matthew Smetana.

Dr. Smetana works in Mercyhealth's MD-1 program. If you have never heard of the MD-1 program, don't feel bad, we didn't either. Dr. Smetana explained that the MD-1 program has about 6 doctors that go out into the field with police, firefighters, and paramedics to administer higher level care than your typical emergency responder.

Dr. Smetana told us that it is rare for a community this size to employ such a program. You might find in in larger metropolitans and they're popular in Europe, but regions the size of Rockford rarely have such a system in place.

The MD-1 program has saved many lives over the years buy giving advanced treatment on site to stabilize a patient so they can be transported back to the hospital. Like Dr. Smetana said, "It doesn't matter how state of the art the equipment is at the hospital if you can't get people there."

You should listen to the above interview to hear Dr. Smetana describe his day-to-day life of an MD-1 physician, it's fascinating.

We thank Dr. Smetana for his time and look forward to next week's guest on What's Up, Doc?

A new episode of What's Up, Doc? airs every Thursday morning at 8:35 on 1440 WROK.