On an otherwise unremarkable day, November 15, 2017 — as the staff at The Heart Hospital Baylor Plano* (THHBP) began swapping out the lobby's side tables for holiday decorations — physicians in one of the hospital's operating rooms hit quite a remarkable milestone: the hospital's 1,000th TAVR procedure.
This is a major feat, but not unexpected given THHBP's history and trajectory — and the vision of its founders. TAVR, or transcatheter aortic valve replacement, is a relatively new procedure.
It allows certain patients with valve disease to undergo valve replacement via a needle stick instead of open heart surgery, which has been the standard of care for decades. The TAVR program at THHBP began in 2012. Since then, THHBP has become one of the nation's most active and experienced hospitals for this sophisticated procedure.
This recent milestone is just one of many that THHBP has accomplished since its leaders opened the doors in January 2007. In less than 10 years, it has grown to become the fifthlargest cardiac surgery program and ranked in the top 2 percent of quality outcomes of all hospitals — a sign of things to come as the hospital undergoes a $100 million expansion. The addition is scheduled for completion in May 2018.
In the early 2000s, a team of prominent cardiologists and cardiothoracic surgeons in the Dallas area, including David Brown, M.D., Michael Mack, M.D., and William Ryan, M.D., began working together to find a hospital partner whose leaders believed in partnering with physicians to achieve quality patient outcomes.
"The most physician-friendly hospital system was Baylor," said Dr. Brown, founding physician and president of medical affairs for THHBP. "The joint venture was a perfect model of alignment so that the hospital and physicians could deliver quality, innovative care to the citizens of North Texas," said Dr. Mack, chair of the cardiovascular service line at Baylor Scott & White Health.
After its launch in 2007, the rapid growth in patients treated reinforced the hospital's proof of concept. By 2009, in conjunction with its rapidly expanding research program, the hospital doubled its bed capacity two years ahead of schedule.
THHBP has been recognized 29 times by Press Ganey® Associates, Inc., the national authority on patient satisfaction. The hospital has also earned Press Ganey's Guardian of Excellence® Award for Patient Experience, based on inpatient and emergency department scores, multiple times, as well as the Pinnacle of Excellence Award.
How does this happen in a decade? While there wasn't a formula, there were some key philo-sophies that its founders agreed were integral.
One goal has driven — and continues to drive — virtually every decision THHBP's leaders have made: quality wins. This applies whether it's clinical outcomes, research, innovation or the patient experience.
"If we are meticulously vigilant about our quality outcomes, our reputation will continue to expand and remain at the highest level," said Mark A. Valentine, president of The Heart Hospital Baylor Plano and The Heart Hospital Baylor Denton*. "We have more than 1,000 employees and medical staff members who work at The Heart Hospitals, all of whom are focused on our commitment to quality outcomes."
Mark was recruited to join THHBP while he was serving as the regional vice president of Cardiovascular Medicine for Cleveland Clinic. He was hired "before the shovel was in the ground," the leaders of the hospital like to say.
"I was pretty excited to see the vision of what Dr. Brown and others wanted to see happen at this facility, and we have been on a rapid growth trajectory for more than 10 years," Mark recalled.
Another cornerstone of quality at THHBP is a team approach to addressing complex cardiovascular conditions. Every patient case is looked at through multiple lenses to determine a comprehensive treatment plan.
"This is a Heart Hospital," Dr. Brown said. "It is a department of one. We don't have a surgical department, a cardiology department, an anesthesia department, an internal medicine department. It's a department of one that delivers care."
This means that a single patient may have his or her case reviewed by multiple specialists on the medical staff, including cardiovascular surgeons, vascular surgeons, interventional cardiologists, noninvasive cardiologists, electrophysiologists and cardiac imaging specialists. The close working relationship among these specialties helps promote the right treatment plan for patients with complex heart disease.
"A crucial element of our success has been inclusivity in building a heart team," said Dr. Brown. "We believe that we have become one of the leading institutions in the world in developing this open-ended approach for a heart team that delivers to you, your family, your parents, your siblings, your kids — everybody — the right treatment outcome for you."
"It's all one team," Dr. Mack said. "That was a very unique concept when we started this 10 years ago."
Because of this unified focus and interdisciplinary approach, THHBP is poised for even greater success. One way it is supporting this is by training and educating the next generation of cardiac specialists.
"We have medical staff who were trained in the top institutions in the United States, who will be our leadership in the future," Dr. Mack said.
In 2016, THHBP took the first step in building what will become a top graduate medical education program by welcoming the first trainees into its Structural Heart Fellowship program. The first two fellows graduated from the program in the summer of 2017. In 2018, THHBP will begin its new training program for cardiac surgery residents.
"We have a unique opportunity, based on the last 10 years, to make the next 10 years even better. We haven't even begun to scratch the surface of our potential," Dr. Mack said. "We have the best of all worlds in quality patient care, academic medicine, research and innovation, which already positions us as the premier heart institution in Texas. Our eyes are now on the rest of the nation."
For more information on how you can support research and medical education initiatives at THHBP, contact Lynn Bohne at 214.820.4070 or Lynn.Bohne@BSWHealth.org.
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