TCH Newsroom
Contact: Rodney Foushee
Public Relations & Marketing Manager
(828) 883-5435
Surgical Practice Opens in Brevard
BREVARD, N.C., March 4, 2008—Transylvania Community Hospital is pleased to announce that access to local general surgery service has increased. This includes office appointments, inpatient consultations, elective and emergency surgeries.
Dr. Allan Huffman and Dr. Thomas Eisenhauer of Hendersonville Surgical Associates have agreed to provide temporary general surgery services to local patients until two newly recruited general surgeons arrive this summer. Their service will include: coverage of emergency surgical patients in a shared call rotation with Dr. Suzanne Hoekstra, local office hours two days each week, inpatient consultations and regular surgery days at Transylvania Community Hospital. Huffman and Eisenhauer will begin seeing patients this week on the Brevard hospital campus.
Transylvania Community Hospital is also pleased to announce that Pisgah Surgical Associates will open this summer. Two new surgeons are moving to the area this summer and will be the permanent surgeons at Pisgah Surgical in Brevard.
“Since the summer of 2007, access to general surgery services in our area has diminished with the closure of one practice and the retirement of another surgeon,” said Bob Bednarek, president and CEO of Transylvania Community Hospital. “It was further affected by the failure of a recruited surgeon to honor a contract. Because of these three events, many patients were being referred elsewhere and our community was not adequately served. This temporary service will help meet community needs until the new surgical practice—Pisgah Surgical Associates—opens in June 2008.”
“General surgery is a core healthcare service that is in high demand nationally,” said Dr. Fred Bahnson, Transylvania Community Hospital’s surgery section chair. The national shortage of general surgeons is affecting many communities beyond western North Carolina, he said.
“Drs. Eisenhauer and Huffman are two well-respected area surgeons who I feel will serve us well and allow us to have fulltime surgical coverage until the new permanent practice opens,” Bahnson continued. “I am delighted that we can continue to offer the surgical care that our patients deserve right here at Transylvania Community Hospital.”
Eisenhauer attended the University of South Carolina School of Medicine in Columbia and completed his residency at Greenville Hospital System. He is board certified in general surgery. Huffman attended medical school at the University of Alabama School of Medicine in Birmingham, completed a residency at Carraway Methodist Medical Center in Birmingham and a fellowship at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. He is board certified in both general and vascular surgery.
Eisenhauer and Huffman will be seeing patients in an office shared with Dr. Carmelo Hernandez of Sylvan Valley OB/GYN on Medical Park Drive on the hospital campus. Patients can make appointments by calling 885-5700.
About Transylvania Community Hospital
Celebrating its 75th year, Transylvania Community Hospital is a nationally ranked 5-Star Hospital and a leading provider of quality healthcare services in Transylvania and surrounding counties. Based in Brevard, N.C., it is a not-for-profit community hospital founded in 1933 and is the largest employer in Transylvania County.