VIDALIA — The Riverpark Medical Center’s vascular center is only one year old, but Dr. John White said it is already making a difference.

“We have, as you may know, Mississippi and Louisiana, have very high rates of coronary vascular disease,” White said. “We now have a facility to not only diagnose those issues but to treat them.”

White, one of the founding doctors of Riverpark, said the vascular center arose last year out of a mixture of circumstance and need.

White also is Wound Care Director at Promise Hospital of the Miss-Lou, and in that role, he came in contact with several vascular doctors working in the area.

“I became familiar with the vascular surgeons and I thought, ‘Well, these guys would enjoy having a space in a facility that’s already here and has just what they need,’” White said.  “After some discussions, they said, ‘Yeah we really want to be there.’”

Because the available space had previously been a cardiac catheterization lab, it was perfect for the vascular surgeons’ practices, he said.

Particularly the facility’s physicians specialize in blocked arteries in the lower extremities.

“They have now developed a technique where they can pass a catheter the length of the artery from the groin to the foot,” he said. “They can actually remove blood clots in the smaller blood vessels even in the foot. … It’s instant blood flow.”

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study states the rate of hospitalizations for cardiovascular disease in Adams County from 2012-2014 was 55 out of every 1,000 people.

The rate for Concordia Parish was similar, with a rate of 56 for every 1,000 people.

The surrounding parishes and counties have even higher cardiovascular hospitalizations rate — with 64-per-1,000 in Catahoula Parish and 57-per-1,000 in Jefferson County — yet medical centers with the same treatment options are in short supply, White said.

The only other place such services would be available, he said, is in surrounding metropolitan areas such as Baton Rouge, Jackson or Alexandria.

“We had the facilities and the surgeons and the need,” White said. “It made sense.”

This most recent addition to Riverpark Medical Center’s services, however, only adds to the facility’s overall goal, White said.

“What we’re really working toward is a larger goal of whole-patient wellness,” White said. “We have a lot of people who come through our doors on a daily basis, and we want to work toward preventative medicine as well as responsive.”

This whole-patient, preventative concept, White said, would provide one place for patients to receive specialized care.

“I mean if we have one woman here in the head and neck clinic and we know she’s never had a mammogram, we can provide that service,” White said. “Unfortunately, tobacco use is pretty prevalent here. If we have a patient we know has a history of tobacco use, we can offer our services to them.”

White said having a patient-centric business model has been his goal since he first helped open Riverpark in 2003.

As new services such as the vascular center continue to open and serve the people of the Miss-Lou, White said that goal is becoming a reality.

“You know many people, they want to be a part of something bigger, something that helps people,” White said. “I think, for me, this is it.”