Orlando Hospital Systems Vie for Heart-Transplant Program
By Harry Wessel, The Orlando Sentinel, Fla.
Jun. 26–Central Florida’s two largest hospital systems — Orlando Health and Florida Hospital — submitted competing bids Wednesday to start a heart-transplant program in Orlando. State regulators will decide by Aug. 22 whether to accept both, neither or just one.
No Florida metro area, including huge Miami-Dade County, has more than one heart-transplant program, making it unlikely the state would approve both Orlando applications. But the large east Central Florida organ-transplant district that includes Orlando has no heart-transplant program, so it’s unlikely the state would turn down both.The dueling hospitals agree Orlando has a strong need for a heart-transplant program, and they downplay the competition angle. But officials with both systems acknowledge the near-inevitability of one winner and one loser.
Here are highlights from their applications.
Orlando Health
*We’ve provided cardiac care in this community longer than anyone and, with the region’s only Level 1 trauma center, have the most experience caring for the sickest of the sick.
*We retrieve more organs for transplantation than any hospital in our region.
*As one of the state’s top academic medical centers and the only statutory teaching hospital in the region, we can provide high-quality care along with medical education and research.
*We already have hired one of the nation’s top heart-transplant surgeons, Dr. Javier Lafuente of the Methodist DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center in Houston, to lead the program while also serving as academic chairman of cardiothoracic surgery.
*We are prepared to start transplanting hearts within six months of state approval.
Florida Hospital
*We’ve been doing organ transplants for 35 years, and we’re the only hospital in the region that performs adult pancreas, liver and bone-marrow transplants.
*We treat more cardiac patients than any other U.S. hospital. Last year we did more than twice as many open-heart surgeries as Orlando Regional Medical Center did.
*Patient care before and especially after heart-transplant surgery is at least as important as the surgery itself, and our new 15-story Ginsburg Tower opens this November.
*We’re also applying to do lung transplants, creating a “cardiothoracic transplant program.” Having both programs will allow for more backup coverage for transplant surgeons.
*We are prepared to start transplanting hearts within 12 months of state approval.
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