Danbury Hospital Seeks State Approval

 For Advanced Cardiology Services

DANBURY — Danbury Hospital plans to file a Letter of Intent with the State of Connecticut Office of Health Care Access (OHCA) to perform coronary angioplasty and cardiac surgery at the hospital.

Danbury Hospital currently is not allowed to perform angioplasty, a procedure that opens blocked arteries, so patients who are having a heart attack are treated with drugs and sent to hospitals in Bridgeport, New Haven, or Hartford.

Danbury Hospital officials said their patients deserve more timely access to these life-saving prevailing interventions, and offering them would complete the hospital’s range of cardiovascular services and enhance future capabilities among its nearly 20 surgical specialties.

 Previously Danbury Hospital was denied permission because state health officials felt it was best to locate open heart surgery centers and angioplasty services at only seven hospitals in the state. That was before some studies showed angioplasty superior to clot-busting drugs at saving lives.

Following the Letter of Intent, the hospital will submit a Certificate of Need application to OHCA to provide coronary angioplasty (formally known as percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty or PTCA), and cardiac surgery, paving the way for continued advances in the treatment of heart disease in greater Danbury. During angioplasty, doctors insert a catheter into the blocked artery, open the artery with a balloon, and sometimes insert a metal stent to keep it open.

Danbury Hospital and Danbury Health Systems, Inc President and CEO Frank J. Kelly described the prospective program as a partnership with a leading regional or national provider of interventional cardiology services. The initial cost of $3–4 million for the program would be funded through operations and/or donations.

“The people of western Connecticut are not being served at the same level as the rest of the state and other parts of the country. We believe people in our community deserve direct access to state-of-the-art cardiac care,” said Mr Kelly. “Several widely regarded studies show angioplasty as the most effective treatment for patients suffering a heart attack rather than clot-dissolving drugs. An estimated two-thirds of Americans or more than 1 million who have heart attacks annually do not have access to angioplasty, and we don’t want the people of greater Danbury to be among them,” he said.

Keith A. Hovan, senior vice president, operations, who is leading the development for advanced cardiac services, said, “The medical community has already heard the call for change in cardiac care. A variety of interventions to restore blood flow such as angioplasty and other procedures using balloons and stents are proving themselves as superior methods to remove or compress plaque in the arteries, as well as prevent reclosure of the coronary arteries.”

In materials prepared to secure public support for the campaign, the hospital also cited these reasons for planning this kind of service:

Time is essential, and current state-approved programs are so distant. Delays due to traffic, weather, and availability of transportation cause patients to recover more slowly and suffer more complications.

Technological advances have resulted in decreased risk for these interventional services; thus, clot-dissolving drugs are now bypassed, and angioplasty is the standard of care.

Distance from the present approved programs causes increased hardships on families, who represent an important part of the patient’s recovery and rehabilitation. Danbury patients currently have the second longest distance in Connecticut to travel to interventional cardiac services.

The inherent clinical and financial strength of Danbury Hospital’s infrastructure and performance means the hospital is the logical provider to offer these services in western Connecticut.

An inability to provide these services makes western Connecticut less desirable to employers, residents, and physicians. People in communities of this size expect direct access to this level of care, and physicians want to be associated with a hospital that practices at the forefront of cardiac expertise.

Plans for the interventional cardiology program follow several decades of advances in cardiovascular care at Danbury Hospital, which operates an extensive noninvasive cardiac testing center, the Jack and Richard Lawrence Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory, which has very low complication rates and maintains a 100 percent credentialed staff in invasive cardiology; a fully accredited echocardiography laboratory; advanced nuclear cardiology services; coronary care and telemetry inpatient units; a preventive cardiology program at the Marcus Cardiac Rehabilitation Center, and an accredited noninvasive vascular laboratory and vascular surgery program.