Siemens gives away two MRIs

Officially the winner of the Siemens Win an MRI contest was Lockport Memorial Hospital in Lockport, NY, near Buffalo.

The hospital in the former factory town has long been threatened with closure, its people worked hard on the contest, and they deserve congratulations.

Just don't tell my friend Tommy Bass.

Tommy lives in Americus, Georgia, and he feels like a winner too, because Siemens decided to give a second MRI to Sumter Regional Hospital, after company officials visited and heard its story.

If their visit was like mine last spring, I'm not surprised. (My own picture, above, is not that good. You can find more pictures here, and here, and here.)

The March tornado came right over my friend Tommy's house but actually touched down a half-mile northeast, hitting the hospital and the surrounding neighborhood.

Eventually the hospital building had to be demolished.

When I wrote about this in October I tried to be objective, but I was secretly hoping Sumter would win. So were a lot of people. It was an enormous story in Southwest Georgia. Folks there really thought they won.

They didn't. But they did. Once the hospital is rebuilt, a few years from now, it will have a brand new $800,000 Essenza MRI machine. State of the art. Energy-saving, too. Clean lines. Swe-eet.

It's a good news story. Two MRI machines. Two winners. Well, a lot more than two. Maybe your hospital equipment company can benefit from a similar contest.

I hope so.