As regional hospitals seek to compete with their New York City counterparts, more valley residents can find quality cardiology services right in their own backyard via facilities growing services to match competition farther south.
Some are partnering with Manhattan counterparts. Affiliations with city-centric hospitals have given patients who insist on having their surgeries done in the five boroughs the option of receiving after-care in their own communities, particularly when it comes to oncology and cardiology.
As Westchester Medical Center prepares to partner with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center for its oncology services, so have other hospitals found affiliations to be beneficial to both, particularly in cardiology.
Orange Regional Medical Center”™s CEO Scott Batulis recently gave U.S. Rep. John Hall a tour of its new hospital in the town of Wallkill, scheduled to open in mid-2011. Its Peter Frommer M.D. Heart Center offers patients advanced heart care procedures without having to travel and will offer elective angioplasty, the first hospital in the region to do so.
ORMC currently partners with Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx and Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan.
In Rockland, Active International”™s Cardiovascular Institute opened in 2007, the only hospital between New York City and Albany to offer open-heart surgery.
As part of the Bon Secours Charity Health System, Active”™s $17 million cardio-care center on the Good Samaritan campus in Suffern has performed more than 750 open-heart surgeries; 6,000 cardiac catheterizations; and more than 2,000 angioplasties, said its CEO, Phil Patterson, at a luncheon for the Rockland Business Association in November. “Bringing in a renowned cardiologist from Lancaster Hospital in Pennsylvania, Dr. Edward Lundy, demonstrated we were ready and able to provide a quality alternative for cardiac patients who were traveling outside the area to get services.
“Before we opened, there was a 130-mile corridor where this kind of care was not available,” said Patterson. “Cardio care is an important service we are able to provide to the community. Before we opened, people were either traveling outside the area or out of state or not getting care at all. This pushed the statistical number of deaths to unacceptable levels.”
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“As the population grows older and wiser, more attention is being paid to women and heart disease,” said Dr. Ethan Gundeck, a cardiologist with the Hudson Valley Heart Center in Fishkill. “There is more of an awareness of women and heart disease; it”™s always been out there but it is being increasingly recognized as not just a ”˜man”™s”™ disease.”
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Women”™s estrogen levels keep them relatively free of worry, but as they age and go through menopause, said Gundeck, heart disease is becoming more prevalent. “People are living longer, and doctors were less aware that women are susceptible to heart disease, too.” Women”™s symptoms often do not follow typical warning signs, continued Gundeck. “Over half the women who present with heart disease have a-typical symptoms””but the disease process itself is a bit different. Plaque that forms in arteries can be a more diffuse type and seems to affect smaller vessels in women.”
One woman, said Gundeck, was not having those typical warnings ”“ pressure in the chest, sweating. “Women can have those symptoms, but the pain can be sharp and disappear. During a routine examination, one woman was asked if she was having any problems. She said that when she was playing with her grandchildren, she felt a tightness in her throat. After an angiogram, we learned she had a 99 percent blockage in one of her arteries, and a stent was put in. It is really up to the doctor to be thorough and for the patient to report any unusual symptoms, no matter how silly they may sound. It can save your life.”
Gundeck, who has privileges at Vassar Brothers and St. Francis medical facilities in Poughkeepsie and at Northern Dutchess Hospital in Rhinebeck, will be one of the featured speakers at the American Heart Association”™s “Go Red for Women” luncheon at The Grandview in Poughkeepsie Friday, Feb. 26.
