GOV. Joe Manchin faced a difficult decision with respect to whether hospitals that cannot perform open-heart surgery should be allowed to perform emergency angioplasties and other cardiac catheterization services.
He was not going to please everyone.
West Virginia has 74 hospitals. Only six are approved to do open-heart surgery. Charleston Area Medical Center is one of the top 10 cardiac centers in the United States.
Some of the state's smaller hospitals wanted permission to do angioplasties even though they did not have open-heart surgery units to which they could send patients if the need arose.
Some authorities - and larger hospitals - contended it would be irresponsible to allow smaller hospitals to do angioplasties when they don't have ready backup.
Other experts - and smaller hospitals - disagreed, and said the larger hospitals were concerned not only about patient care but about their bottom lines.
The West Virginia Health Care Authority studied the issue for a long time. The Weirton Medical Center, for instance, took part in a pilot project for five years.
In only one of the almost 900 cases in which it performed cardiac catheterization did the patient need to go immediately to a full cardiac hospital, Dr. Joseph Endrich, chief executive officer of the Weirton hospital, told the Intelligencer.
GOV. Joe Manchin faced a difficult decision with respect to whether hospitals that cannot perform open-heart surgery should be allowed to perform emergency angioplasties and other cardiac catheterization services.
He was not going to please everyone.
West Virginia has 74 hospitals. Only six are approved to do open-heart surgery. Charleston Area Medical Center is one of the top 10 cardiac centers in the United States.
Some of the state's smaller hospitals wanted permission to do angioplasties even though they did not have open-heart surgery units to which they could send patients if the need arose.
Some authorities - and larger hospitals - contended it would be irresponsible to allow smaller hospitals to do angioplasties when they don't have ready backup.
Other experts - and smaller hospitals - disagreed, and said the larger hospitals were concerned not only about patient care but about their bottom lines.
The West Virginia Health Care Authority studied the issue for a long time. The Weirton Medical Center, for instance, took part in a pilot project for five years.
In only one of the almost 900 cases in which it performed cardiac catheterization did the patient need to go immediately to a full cardiac hospital, Dr. Joseph Endrich, chief executive officer of the Weirton hospital, told the Intelligencer.
That patient had elective - not emergency - surgery the following day.
In 257 of Weirton's cases, patients were having an acute heart event when they arrived at the hospital. The hospital's overall complication rate was 2.3 percent. The national average is 5 percent.
The health care authority sided with the smaller hospitals, and the governor agreed to let most of the authority's rules go into effect. Forty-three other states had already come to similar conclusions.
Manchin said the decision "will give our citizens easier access to important emergency heart procedures."
The decision will benefit many people and many communities.
Is the care available at full-service cardiac centers superior? Probably.
But people who don't live right down the road from one of those hospitals need quick access to life-saving options. Now more people will have that.
No doubt the authority will continue to closely monitor hospitals' experience with these procedures, and hold them to the highest standards.
