Hospital granted OK to do heart surgeries

Patients needing emergency open-heart surgeries won't have to be diverted or transferred from Southern Hills Hospital and Medical Center to another medical facility beginning in the fall of 2008.

The state Board of Health on Friday approved the 139-bed hospital's request to start providing such services in-house.

Jen Sweeney, chief operating officer of Southern Hills, said the hospital would take its time assembling a cardiovascular surgery team of physicians, specialty nurses and technicians as well as equipment in the next several months.

During Friday's meeting, Sweeney told the board that cardiovascular surgery is needed in the southwest valley. About 70 cardiovascular patients are being diverted or transferred to other medical facilities each month because Southern Hills isn't capable of providing open-heart surgeries, said Sweeney and Dr. Zia Khan, a cardiovascular disease specialist with privileges at the hospital.

Sweeney and Khan said the transfer of patients from Southern Hills results in delays in care and places patients at high risk of complications and possibly death. Keeping the patient in one location from diagnosis to surgery provides the safest care, Khan said, while shortening hospital stays and lowering hospital costs.

"The ability to do open-heart surgery will save lives,'' Sweeney told the board.

Before approving Southern Hills' request, the board asked Sweeney why the hospital was seeking an exception from the open-heart surgery volume requirement under Nevada Administrative Code.

Under the regulation, medical facilities must perform 80 operations during the first year after approval and no fewer than 150 in the second year. The regulation, in effect since 1989 and updated in 1999, is intended to ensure that a medical facility's staff is competent, said Lisa Jones, chief of the bureau of licensure and certification for the state's Department of Health and Human Services.

"The thought process is, the more you do, the better you'll be,'' she said.

Southern Hills' request that it was going to perform only half the number of open-heart surgeries in the first year as required, and only 80 in the second year. The facility anticipates meeting the minimum number of operations by the third and each succeeding year, the application stated.

Board member Dr. Vishvinder Sharma said he was concerned with the low volume of patients Southern Hills had indicated and with the amount of experience the hospital's future cardiovascular surgeons might have. "That seems to be low, less than 3.1 per month,'' he said, referring to the number of anticipated patients.

Sweeney said the hospital anticipates doing more than 40 procedures in the first year but wanted to have that threshold in case 80 wasn't reached.

As a result of the approval with fewer operations, the board is requiring Southern Hills to provide it with a report at six months, a year and 24 months. Those reports are to include the number of cardiovascular surgeries performed, average length of hospital stay of those patients, and mortality and admission rates.