Cincinnati Children’s and UK HealthCare Kentucky Children’s Hospital are now jointly providing advanced care for patients in Kentucky with congenital and acquired pediatric heart disease.

This program has been three years in the making, with notable achievements in 2017 including the addition of James Quintessenza, MD, as the chief of pediatric cardiothoracic surgery, and the performance of the first surgery, which relaunched the pediatric cardiac surgery program at Kentucky Children’s Hospital.

The collaboration combines the strength of UK HealthCare’s advanced subspecialty care with the nationally ranked heart care experts from the Heart Institute at Cincinnati Children’s. The program was formed using a “one program, two sites” model, allowing patients to receive the full spectrum of pediatric heart services close to home.

“I’ve found that in Lexington, we have a team of people who are dedicated, caring, experienced and striving to provide the highest quality care possible for these patients and their families,” says Quintessenza, one of the top cardiothoracic surgeons in the nation who previously served at All Children’s Hospital (now Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital) in St. Petersburg, Florida.

UK HealthCare officials voluntarily made the decision to pause providing pediatric cardiothoracic (CT) services in 2012, and a task force was charged with providing recommendations regarding the future of the program. Eventually a Letter of Intent (LOI) was signed with Cincinnati Children’s in 2015 and an agreement finalized in September 2016.

While UK HealthCare was working toward the goal of restarting a program to perform complex surgical procedures for pediatric heart patients, it was paramount to be able to deliver the highest quality services. These standards led to the decision to work with with Cincinnati Children’s, recently ranked third among the nation’s pediatric hospitals by U.S. News and World Report.

Other key components vital in resuming pediatric heart surgeries have been the recruitment and hiring of a world-class program team including pediatric cardiac anesthesia, pediatric cardiac critical care, pediatric perfusion, specialized physician assistants and advanced practice nurse practitioners, among others. UK HealthCare staff participate in intense on-site training at Cincinnati Children’s, while also investing in infrastructure, enabling success through telehealth and other technologies, and specialized equipment and supplies.

Many patients from Kentucky with complex heart conditions have already received their surgical, heart catheterization and electrophysiology care at Cincinnati Children’s while receiving follow-up care with their physician closer to home.

“This collaboration ensures that children will get the right operation, in the right place at the right time,” says Andrew Redington, MD, executive co-director of the Heart Institute and chief of the Division of Pediatric Cardiology at Cincinnati Children’s. “We are all delighted that the first cases have done well, and anticipate ongoing success in the years to come.”