Over the last decade, significant developments have been made in the treatment of heart disease, including the introduction of percutaneous left ventricular assist technologies and percutaneous repair catheters for structural heart disease and endovascular aortic repair. Typically, these procedures require placement of large arterial sheaths (13-24 French [Fr]) for delivery.

Prairie Cardiovascular Consultants helped to build, from scratch, a transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) program at the Prairie Heart Institute at St. John’s Hospital in Springfield, IL — in just three months. This article will explore in particular the specific challenges to a TAVR program in the private-hospital setting, and the development of an echo database to identify patients with severe aortic stenosis (AS) who might be candidates for TAVR. 

Hospitals and health systems continue to seek ways to align their interests with those of their cardiologists in order to achieve common goals. The challenge lies in finding the correct alignment model or structure. Corazon believes that co-management can be a first step toward true clinical integration between the hospital or health system and physicians.

In this era of health care and financial reform, hospital officials are turning to measures that promise to reduce costs yet still improve the quality of care. Consolidating a hospital’s surgical and catheterization departments not only promises those benefits, but will absolutely deliver them — as long as the consolidation process includes strategic changes in staffing and operational management.