Cardiac surgery options nearing expansion on LI

HOSPITAL buildings aren't the only things being expanded. Both Southside Hospital in Bay Shore and Good Samaritan Hospital Medical Center in West Islip have gotten preliminary approval from the state to begin open-heart surgery programs.

Currently, Stony Brook University Medical Center is the only hospital in Suffolk County that can do open-heart surgery. In Nassau, St. Francis Hospital/The Heart Center in Flower Hill, North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, Winthrop-University Hospital in Mineola and Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park can perform open-heart surgery.

Extending cardiac surgery east to Southside, part of the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, makes sense, North Shore-LIJ officials said, because 30 percent of its cardiac surgery patients are Suffolk residents.

The program expansion, which, like Good Samaritan, is awaiting formal approval by New York's health commissioner, Dr. Richard Daines, is part of a $300-million plan to transform Southside into a "tertiary" hospital to which community hospitals can refer patients for specialists. Construction is expected to start in 2012 and be finished by 2016, although the hospital hopes to begin performing cardiac surgeries sometime next year.

Expanding the heart program at Good Samaritan, part of Catholic Health Services, is a logical extension of its current cardiology services, said hospital spokeswoman Christine Hendriks.

St. Francis will provide the surgeons. South Bay Cardiovascular Associates, a large cardiology practice in Suffolk County that has had a long affiliation with Good Samaritan, is also becoming an "extension clinic" of St. Francis. If the state approves the program, surgeries could be performed in three to six months, Hendriks said.