Casper: A Beacon for Health Care in Wyoming

The excellent options for health care in Casper keep local and statewide residents in great shape.

By Laura Hill on March 23, 2023

Jake Bigelow

Wyoming presents a challenge when it comes to providing excellent health care. How do you meet the needs of communities and individuals in an enormous area with a population spread out over hundreds of miles?

With hard work, vision and ingenuity, Casper has become the place where Wyoming comes for care, specialized care in particular, making travel out of state unnecessary.

The city is home to a wide range of physicians and other providers, clinics and hospitals that provide care for patients of all ages with everyday health issues, while also treating those with urgent and emergent problems and chronic illnesses.

“The health environment in Wyoming can be tough. But health care in Casper has continually grown in the last several years,” says Mindi Pile, COO of Summit Health.

Mandy Cepeda, director of marketing and public relations at Banner Wyoming Medical Center, agrees.

“Since Wyoming is such a rural state, we see people from farther away than other like facilities in the country. We know that people heal better when they can be closer to home,” she says. “We’re proud to be able to take care of people right here in Wyoming.”

Promising Partnership

Banner Wyoming Medical Center is the largest hospital in Wyoming, with two campuses and 14 primary, specialty and immediate care clinics.

As a regional trauma and referral center, it serves 11 Wyoming counties with more than 250,000 people and is Banner’s flagship hospital in the state.

The medical center offers comprehensive health care, with services that range from bariatric and weight loss surgery to wound care, along with maternity, neurology, pediatrics, pulmonary, emergency and intensive care services, rehab, and much more. The hospital is particularly known for its stroke, trauma and heart services, for which it has won numerous awards.

“We are fortunate to have an outstanding heart program at Banner Wyoming, thanks to the commitment of our community cardiologists,” Cepeda says.

In 2022, the hospital began performing the WATCHMAN procedure for patients who are at high risk of bleeding due to blood thinners.

Banner’s 2020 acquisition of Wyoming Medical Center has been “an ongoing and very thoughtful process,” Cepeda says, that has enabled the hospital to “keep and expand the delivery of medical service to rural areas of Wyoming.

“Banner has made significant commitments to invest in capital improvements over the next several years that are 100% dedicated to Wyoming Medical Center’s facilities, technology, programs, people and operations.”

Treatment and Beyond

Those in search of state-of-the-art cancer care find it at Rocky Mountain Oncology Center, where innovative treatment options, including custom-tailored prostate cancer treatment plans, are available.

Here, a patient’s quality of life while receiving treatment is an important part of the care equation. The center’s team of physicians and other providers goes beyond medical procedures to help ensure patients’ emotional and social well-being are addressed as well.

Elkhorn Valley Rehabilitation Hospital has been ranked nationally for the quality of its rehabilitative services. The hospital, part of Ernest Health, provides intensive rehab services for those recovering from strokes, brain, spinal cord and orthopedic injuries, and other disabling conditions.

The hospital provides both inpatient and outpatient treatment, which enables patients to recover closer to home, where they can benefit from the support of family and their community while receiving top-notch medical care.

“At Summit Medical Center, the focus is on giving the community choice, whether that be health care or in employment,” says Pile.

Patients come from around the state for services that include orthopedic and spine surgery, general surgery and ENT services. It also offers a pain management clinic that provides innovative noninvasive services.

“Summit is well known in the community for its commitment to providing exceptional patient care,” Pile says. “Patients enjoy coming here. The access is easy, the staff is friendly and the experience is always extraordinary.”

Innovative Technology Created in Casper

If you’ve broken a leg while tumbling down a ski slope, wrecked your knee while mountain biking or regretted an overly ambitious climb, there’s someone in Casper you may want to see.

Dr. Joseph McGinley can not only empathize with your pain – he can probably fix it, too. McGinley, an avid competitive athlete who excels at cross-country biking and skiing, is an adventure racer and triathlete, and he has scaled several of the world’s highest peaks. Did we forget to mention that he has swum the frigid waters of San Francisco Bay from Alcatraz Island to the mainland? Seven times?

McGinley is a leading musculoskeletal and sports medicine specialist with degrees in engineering and medicine and an extensive background in radiology. An educator and an entrepreneur, he has a remarkable litany of accomplishments, from founding his orthopedic clinic to teaching his special noninvasive treatment techniques at McGinley Education to holding patents on innovative medical devices and techniques, such as the Lever Action Plate System.

With the system, surgeons can implant a device that allows them to easily align complex wrist fractures – injuries that account for about 20% of all fractures.

McGinley’s patented IntelliSense Drill Technology is a handheld robotic technology that provides the surgeon with a precise depth measurement while drilling into bone, potentially improving outcomes, and saving time and expense.

Where to headquarter all this innovation? A newly renovated mid-century modern landmark building, of course. The former Wells Fargo Bank building, which began life in 1964 as the Wyoming National Bank building, has undergone a three-year restoration and now, as the M Building, will be home to McGinley’s various enterprises.