April 20, 2001

Three community hospitals — including the Partners-affiliated North Shore Medical Center (NSMC) — were given the green light last week by the Department of Public Health to offer open-heart surgical services. The other two community hospitals chosen were Cape Cod Hospital and Charlton Memorial Hospital in Fall River. Six community hospitals had competed for permission to open cardiac surgical services.

NSMC has worked with the MGH to plan the open-heart surgical service at Salem Hospital. The program is expected to begin serving patients in May 2002. The collaboration will combine the cardiac surgical expertise of the MGH with a community hospital system that has proven capable of supporting such a service, using sophisticated diagnostic and surgical abilities.

In a similar collaboration, Cape Cod Hospital will work closely with BWH to develop and launch its own cardiac surgery program.

"Cardiac surgery and angioplasty have advanced to such a stage of maturity and reproducibility that they can and should be offered in the community," says David Torchiana, MD, chief of MGH Cardiac Surgery and the initial lead cardiac surgeon at Salem Hospital. "We at the MGH are pleased that NSMC was chosen by the Department of Public Health to offer these services to patients on the North Shore, and we are looking forward to continuing our long-standing partnership with them."

According to David J. Roberts, MD, director of Cardiac Services at Salem Hospital, the establishment of cardiac surgery and angioplasty services at NSMC, along with the collaboration of the MGH, will offer North Shore-area patients a full range of cardiac care. These services include identifying and managing risk factors for heart disease, acute emergency and inpatient care, short-and long-term rehabilitation and home care. "For more than 20 years, NSMC has pursued a vision that has included the development of a regional medical center capable of supporting levels and scopes of care not otherwise available on the North Shore, and not usually associated with a community-based hospital," says Gary L. Gottlieb, MD, MBA, NSMC president and CEO.

In receiving approval from the Department of Public Health, NSMC has demonstrated that it will exceed the volume of cardiac surgery and cardiac angioplasty procedures necessary to implement a safe, high-quality program. The hospital anticipates that approximately 200 open-heart procedures will be performed in the program's first year of operation.

This partnership between the MGH and NSMC is nothing new. The two hospitals have had a clinical collaboration since 1966, when Salem Hospital launched one of the state's first cardiac catheterization programs at a community hospital. The MGH and NSMC first discussed establishing a cardiac surgical service at Salem Hospital as early as 1985.

More recently, two NSMC cardiologists were granted privileges to perform cardiac catheterization/angioplasty at the MGH in 1994. And in 1995, the MGH and NSMC established the first digital echocardiography link for two-way patient consultation between an academic medical center and a community hospital.