Hospital listens to heart needs of St. Bernard

THE BATTLE FOR the hearts of St. Bernard Parish is intensifying.

St. Bernard residents have traditionally traveled to hospitals in Eastern New Orleans for heart surgery. But St. Bernard residents now have a local option when it comes to heart surgery. Chalmette Medical Center started performing

The move means that Chalmette Medical Center has an opportunity to grow its revenues while expanding the services it offers to St. Bernard residents. Nevertheless, some of that business will come at a price to hospitals in their neighboring market.

Larry Graham, chief executive officer of Chalmette Medical Center, says the hospital normally gets about 65% of the hospital business from patients who live in St. Bernard Parish. He says if the hospital is able to attract the same share in heart surgery, it will bad a successful heart program.

About 280 St. Bernard residents need heart surgery in any given year. The hospital has seen 20 heart surgery patients since June.

The hospital has named Dr. Robert Frank as its medical director for the heart surgery program and put its intensive care nurses through a heart care training program.

Chalmette Medical Center has assembled its heart program over the last few years. The hospital bought new equipment two years ago for its catheterization on lab. When the hospital renovated its operating rooms three years ago, it designed them to handle heart surgery.

Meanwhile, the parish's main cardiology group, the Louisiana Heart Center, is planning a 45,000-square-foot clinic across the street from the hospital. The group now rents space in the hospital's medical office building. The five-cardiologist practice hopes to break ground in April.

The Louisiana Heart Center once considered building its own heart surgery center in St. Bernard. But the partner who started the practice, Dr. Bruce Iteld, says his company took that tack to put pressure on the hospital to start offering heart surgery. He says the practice will not compete with the hospital's efforts to start its heart surgery program.

Iteld thinks the hospital's new heart surgery program translates to better care for St. Bernard residents in a more familiar setting. He says he and his fellow cardiologists can make rounds across the street, instead of across town.

Eastern New Orleans hospitals such as Pendleton Memorial Medical Center and Lakeland Medical Center will probably see fewer St. Bernard patients with Chalmette Medical Center starting a heart surgery program. But Jack Finn, president of the Metropolitan Hospital Council of New Orleans, says the decrease shouldn't be too painful.

The Metropolitan Hospital Council has opposed efforts to build a new heart hospital in St. Tammany Parish, where Finn says there aren't enough cases to justify the number of heart surgery programs. Once a new hospital is built in Lacombe, about 450 heart cases per year will be spread among five hospitals. In contrast, Chalmette Medical Center will be the only St. Bernard hospital offering heart surgery.