YOUNGSTOWN HMHP breaks ground on heart, vascular center

By WILLIAM K. ALCORN
VINDICATOR HEALTH WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Humility of Mary Health Partners broke ground today for a Heart and Vascular Center at St. Elizabeth Hospital, which HMHP officials say is an unprecedented joint venture with area cardiologists.
The first floor of the three-story building will house the heart and vascular center, an out-patient state-of-the-art, low-risk diagnostic and catheterization facility, said Lisa Parish, vice president of heart and vascular services.
The 15 individuals and groups involved in the partnership will manage and govern the center and own 49 percent of it, Parish said.
"We have worked through a process in which 32 cardiologists in the community, not just those that practice at St. Elizabeth Hospital, were offered an opportunity for a joint venture with HMHP," Parish said.
HMHP has 51-percent ownership to ensure that the appropriate religious and ethical directives that go along with the church are adhered to, such as charity care, Parish said.
Joint ventures like this are not unusual elsewhere, Parish said.
Earlier venture
Previously, the Howland Surgery Center on state Route 46 in Howland was a joint venture between HMHP and physicians, but, because of regulatory changes, the hospital was forced to buy out the physicians' interest.
There are provisions in the new agreement that protect the physicians.
Parish said federal and state regulation changes in 2001 permitted this type of joint venture.
Also, the American College of Cardiology published a position paper detailing what type of patients can be treated in what types of facilities.
The building is scheduled to be completed by April 2003 and HMHP expects the center to be open by August.
Costs involved
The building will cost $5.9 million, and the interior equipment, furnishings and information systems for the first floor of the center will cost an additional $6 million, she said.
The second floor will house a minimum of three new open-heart operating rooms, and the third floor will have two new vascular operating rooms.
The likely options for the space occupied by the heart and vascular center are electro-physiology, the specialization dealing with the heart's electrical system; and an expansion of the peripheral vascular intervention lab, where angioplasty of peripheral vascular system, and arteries of abdomen, legs and kidney are done, Parish said.
Parish said the joint venture protects the hospital by possibly preventing surgeons from going into business for themselves.
In Dayton, she said, physicians went into business with somebody else and put the hospital out of business.
The cardiovascular line is profitable, but people need to understand that the hospital needs that profitability to provide other services that don't make money, such as charity care, she said.
alcorn@vindy.com