South Shore U Hospital gets $1M gift from grateful heart patient

Rick Duffy was living with his wife Alleen on their 62-foot boat Serendipity in Huntington Harbor last summer when he started feeling winded and tired nearly every day.

What followed was a flurry of medical appointments and a nearly five-hour open-heart surgery at South Shore University Hospital that Duffy believes saved his life.

To express his gratitude, the Florida resident and his wife have donated $1 million to launch the Rick and Alleen Duffy Fellowship in Cardiothoracic Surgery at the Bay Shore hospital, Northwell Health said Wednesday. The fellowship will be overseen by the doctor who operated on Duffy, Dr. Robert Kalimi, the hospital’s chair of cardiovascular and thoracic surgery.

“As far as I'm concerned, he gave me — that team gave me several more years of healthy life,” said Duffy, 77, the executive chairman of the Kentucky-based Long John Silver’s nationwide restaurant chain and a retired advertising agency owner. “I just feel very lucky. ... There was no question I was going to do something.”

The research fellowship, funded over four years, will help the hospital train up to two fellows a year, gather data on surgery outcomes, conduct other research and expand the medical education program at the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, New Hyde Park-based Northwell said. The Duffys’ donation is part of Northwell’s $1 billion fundraising campaign.

Duffy said he wanted to help train future surgeons and “get the word out” about the quality of care he received at South Shore University Hospital.

Duffy’s heart condition could have turned into “a catastrophic event,” said Donna Moravick, executive director of the hospital and a cardiothoracic nurse practitioner. “It was serendipity that he was up here.”

Duffy, an Indiana native, was born with a defective heart valve that makes it harder for the heart to pump blood to the body. About six years ago, doctors discovered an aneurysm — a weak, bulging area — next to the defective valve in his heart.

“I actually wanted that surgery for a few years, because when you have an aneurysm, it only gets worse,” Duffy said. But, he said, surgeons in Florida and elsewhere told him the aneurysm wasn’t big enough to merit an operation.

He recalled thinking, “What are we doing? Are we playing Russian roulette here?”

When he felt the symptoms previous doctors had warned him were red flags,  he took advice from friends to consult Dr. James Klepper at Huntington Hospital, who referred him to Kalimi. The heart surgeon was among those recognized for having significantly better-than-average mortality rates in a state Department of Health report released in April, state records show.

More than seven months after the October procedure, Duffy said he has been feeling even better than he did before his symptoms began last summer.

“I just went to the gym a little earlier and I'm doing, you know, 50-pound weights and 20 reps," he said. “I feel great.”

By Maura McDermott

maura.mcdermott@newsday.commauramcdermott

Maura McDermott covers education. Since joining Newsday in 2012, she also has worked on the investigations team and covered real estate and the business of health care.