Helen Ellis Memorial has one more chance to show it should be allowed to offer the procedures.
By Times Staff Writer
Published May 27, 2003
TARPON SPRINGS - Helen Ellis Memorial Hospital has appealed the state's decision to deny its application to start its own open heart surgery center.
Hospital administrators filed the appeal about two weeks ago, saying the hospital serves an area that needs better access to cardiovascular medical services.
"The hospital is located in an area that has a very high concentration of senior adults," said Jerry Touchton, marketing manager for Helen Ellis. "Right now if a person in a neighborhood in north Pinellas (or) southwest Pasco is in need of open heart surgery, it's approximately 15 miles in either direction (to the nearest center)."
Late last year, both Helen Ellis and Mease Countryside Hospital asked for state approval to perform coronary bypass operations, valve surgeries and angioplasty procedures for adult patients. The state requires that hospitals get a form of approval known as a certificate of need for those procedures.
Each hospital proposed a program in an area now served by two of the 10 biggest open heart surgery programs in the state: Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater and Regional Medical Center Bayonet Point in west Pasco County.
The state Agency for Health Care Administration rejected both applications in February. Mease Countryside also appealed the denial, but last week Mease spokesman Matt Novak said the hospital would withdraw its appeal.
"Basically, our hope was to provide interventional cardiovascular and angioplasty services to the Countryside community," he said. He added the hospital would consider conditions in the area in the future and "determine the best course of action."
The state pointed out in its Feb. 28 ruling that Helen Ellis and Mease Countryside failed to show in their applications that residents in the area were experiencing significant waiting times or travel constraints in getting access to open heart surgery.
The state also questioned the level of demand for each hospital. The expectation by each hospital that it would do enough surgeries "to assure efficiency and quality is questionable," the state said in its analysis for both requests.
Both Morton Plant and Bayonet Point opposed new open heart surgery programs at those hospitals. Largo Medical Center, home of the Largo Medical Institute, has not issued a public statement on the matter, said spokeswoman Sandra Gourdine.
"Morton Plant believes that for a service like open heart surgery, which is a complex, sophisticated, risky service, the more cases (they do), the better care they can provide," said Robert Weiss, an attorney for Morton Plant. "They believe it's not in the best interest of the community to have a dispersal of programs, none of which would provide as high a number of cases as Morton Plant."
A hearing has been scheduled for Jan. 5, so that representatives of Helen Ellis can argue the points made in their initial application. The hospital will not be allowed to make any new arguments. Weiss will represent Morton Plant at that hearing.
Kurt Conover, director of business development at Bayonet Point, said he was not sure whether his hospital would be represented at that hearing.
Helen Ellis once was in danger of financial collapse but has been more stable since merging two years ago with University Community Health, which also runs Sun Coast Hospital in Largo and two hospitals in Tampa. Since the merger, Helen Ellis has opened a sleep disorders clinic and a branch of University Community's diabetes care institute.
The open heart surgery program would draw on the resources and experiences of University Community's Pepin Heart & Vascular Institute, which was established 12 years ago.
"We consider that to be a very important connection for our hospital because they've been providing open heart surgery and other related cardiovascular services for a number of years," Touchton said. "Because of this support and connection they would be providing the expertise necessary to help us."
Helen Ellis has estimated it would spend $7.3-million to create the open heart surgery program, which would have begun in 2006.
Administrators say several hundred patients a year already come to the hospital first, then are transferred elsewhere for open heart surgery or angioplasty.
But Conover said it is more important that hospitals treat a high volume of open heart surgeries than it is for patients to have immediate access to those services.
"If people were losing their lives because it was unavailable, that's one thing," Conover said.
"That's not the case. If it's a little inconvenient, but you go into a place that's a center for excellence, that's where you want to be anyway."
