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A pair of hearts Bon Secours and Sentara expand cardiac care simultaneously

By Janet Dunphy
Inside Business - Hampton Roads
Monday March 7, 2005

Two local health systems have topped out buildings dedicated to cardiac care that will probably be competing with each other one year from now.

Bon Secours Hampton Roads and Sentara Healthcare both held ceremonies on the same day, Feb. 22, celebrating the beginning of the end of construction. Bon Secours received state approval for its facility in March 2003 and Sentara submitted its request for a certificate of public need several months later.

Both Bon Secours and Sentara cite local statistics to justify the need for the extended services. The western area of Hampton Roads, including seniors and African- Americans, is known to have a high rate of heart disease.

American Heart Association statistics show that someone dies from cardiovascular disease every 33 seconds. Nationally, heart diseases and stroke kill more than 950,000 Americans annually, almost as many people as all other causes of death combined. In Virginia, more than 20,000 residents die annually from some form of cardiovascular disease or stroke.

A report on chronic diseases by the Virginia Department of Health found that the black population under age 65 died at the highest rate from all cardiovascular diseases combined. Also, more than half of all cardiovascular disease deaths each year occur among women.

Bon Secours has teamed with Columbia University Medical Center at New York Presbyterian Hospital to expand its cardiac care to open-heart surgery. The new Bon Secours-Columbia University Heart Institute at Maryview Medical Center in Portsmouth is a combination of new construction and renovation. It will be on one floor, built as the second floor of the Maryview Rehabilitation Center.

The Heart Institute will have two open-heart surgery operating rooms, 20 step-down telemetry beds, including eight universal rooms, a new five-bed cardiovascular recovery unit, 12 private telemetry beds and six cardiovascular intensive care unit beds. The cost is $6.2 million and it is expected to open by fall 2005.

Bon Secours believes that many residents of western Hampton Roads have not sought out advanced cardiac care because they did not want to leave their community to receive it, resulting in a higher incidence of cardiac problems.

Dr. Eric Rose, chairman of Columbia’s surgery department, will be the clinical director of the Bon Secours-Columbia University Heart Institute.

" Bon Secours is an extraordinary health care organization and relatively under-appreciated," said Rose, who was in town for the topping off. "There’s a perception that heart disease and associated diseases, like diabetes and hypertension, are over-represented. But there’s a higher incidence here and a higher mortality rate."

Maryview currently has a cardiac intensive care unit, cardiac and vascular diagnostic services, two cardiac catheterization labs and an electrophysiology lab.

According to figures provided by Bon Secours Hampton Roads, the system treated 4,890 patients for inpatient cardiology and cardiac surgery procedures from Sept. 1, 2003, to Aug. 31, 2004. Outpatient figures show that there were more than 27,000 diagnostic cardiology procedures, almost 1,800 cardiac catheterizations and more than 5,700 in cardiac rehabilitation. However, those needing open heart surgery were referred elsewhere.

The Sentara Heart Hospital is a six-story, $94.5 million addition to the Sentara Norfolk General Hospital campus. The building adjoins the existing River Pavilion on the first, second and third floors. It is meant to consolidate existing services, everything from stress tests to diagnostic exams, cardiac catheterization, open-heart surgery and heart transplants.

The Heart Hospital, opening in early 2006, will have 112 private rooms, including 45 pre- and post-procedural rooms, a 20-bed cardiac surgery intensive care unit, an eight-bed cardiac ICU, a 36-bed cardiac surgery step-down unit and a 48-bed cardiac medicine step-down unit. A four-story, 454-space parking garage is also under construction.

According to figures provided by Sentara, the hospital did just over 2,000 cardiothoracic surgeries, including open heart, in 2004 and 11,810 diagnostic and interventional catheterization procedures in 2004.

A Sentara time line says that Norfolk General performed the first open-heart surgery and heart catheterization in the region in 1967. Subsequently, the hospital performed the region’s first heart transplant in 1989.