Infectious diseases is the subspecialty of internal medicine responsible for the diagnosis and treatment of serious and/or life-threatening infections occurring in both healthy persons and anyone with a medical or surgical illness. Great Falls Clinic currently has one full-time infectious disease physician in practice.
Although the great majority of infections experienced during a person's life are brief and self-limited, an occasional long lasting or troublesome infection may occur and require the care of a personal physician. Should the problem then be identified as either difficult to cure or life threatening, the infectious disease physician is consulted to provide additional diagnostic and treatment. Examples of serious conditions cared for by infectious disease physicians include, but are not limited to, brain abscess, deep space infection in the neck, meningitis, severe pneumonia, endocarditis (infection of heart valves), abscesses of abdominal organs, infections of bones and joints, infections in organ or bone marrow transplant recipients, blood stream infections, HIV/AIDS, viral hepatitis, tuberculosis, and infections occurring after surgery.
Patients are seen daily either in the clinic or as inpatients when hospitalized. Access to the infectious disease physician is via consultation or referral from the patients family physician, internist, surgeon, or primary care provider.
Additional services available at our infectious disease clinic are travel advice/travel immunizations, initiation and follow up of outpatient intravenous antibiotic therapy, and post-hospital consultation follow-up. The infectious disease physician also oversees the infection control program at Benifis Healthcare, works closely with Benifis Healthcare and GFC microbiology laboratories, and assists public health professionals at the City-County Health Department in Great Falls.
Although the great majority of infections experienced during a person's life are brief and self-limited, an occasional long lasting or troublesome infection may occur and require the care of a personal physician. Should the problem then be identified as either difficult to cure or life threatening, the infectious disease physician is consulted to provide additional diagnostic and treatment. Examples of serious conditions cared for by infectious disease physicians include, but are not limited to, brain abscess, deep space infection in the neck, meningitis, severe pneumonia, endocarditis (infection of heart valves), abscesses of abdominal organs, infections of bones and joints, infections in organ or bone marrow transplant recipients, blood stream infections, HIV/AIDS, viral hepatitis, tuberculosis, and infections occurring after surgery.
Patients are seen daily either in the clinic or as inpatients when hospitalized. Access to the infectious disease physician is via consultation or referral from the patients family physician, internist, surgeon, or primary care provider.
Additional services available at our infectious disease clinic are travel advice/travel immunizations, initiation and follow up of outpatient intravenous antibiotic therapy, and post-hospital consultation follow-up. The infectious disease physician also oversees the infection control program at Benifis Healthcare, works closely with Benifis Healthcare and GFC microbiology laboratories, and assists public health professionals at the City-County Health Department in Great Falls.
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