Integrated care that gets you better faster

By Dan Monroe

Once again, UAB has raised the bar when it comes to advanced medical care. After more than a decade of planning, UAB’s new Heart and Vascular Center opened earlier this year. At 55,000 square feet, with 13 state-of-the art catheterization labs, and 48 beds, it is the largest center of its kind in the Southeast and offers the opportunity for a broad range of minimally invasive procedures to treat everything from cardiovascular diseases to fibroid tumors. Occupying most of the 6th floor of UAB Hospital’s new North Pavilion, the Heart and Vascular Center serves up to 80 patients a day.

The best doctors and the best equipment working together.
A “heart and vascular center,” a relatively new concept in the organization of healthcare services, brings together in one location five very different, yet related health services: vascular interventional radiology, pediatric cardiology, neurointerventional radiology, diagnostic and interventional cardiology, and cardiac electrophysiology.

There are two significant advantages to bringing together these highly specialized medical disciplines. First, highly specialized physicians now work in an environment that allows for collaboration on difficult cases. “Working together in one center improves collaborative research opportunities as well as patient outcomes,” says G. Neal Kay, M.D., UAB cardiovascular electrophysiologist. “We have moved from multiple systems to one state-of-the-art, standardized system that improves our ability to collaborate across the spectrum of diseases we treat."

The second advantage is technological. By pooling resources in a single center, these doctors and their staffs are afforded leading-edge technologies to help them in treating their patients. UAB radiologist Robert E. Koehler, M.D., one of the two directors of the center, points out that by combining in one location those services previously dispersed throughout the medical center UAB achieves powerful clinical efficiencies.

Seeing the problem is more than half of the solution.
The power center of UAB’s Heart and Vascular Center resides in some of the best imaging equipment in the world. These state-of-the-art imaging machines allow doctors to see problems very clearly and determine the best, least invasive method for treating them. Often, physicians are able to use minimally invasive, catheter-based treatments where before they might have had to resort to more invasive surgery. Some of the procedures being performed in the center are: coronary and carotid artery stenting, correction of congenital heart defects, catheter ablation for complex arrhythmias and tumors, implantation of pacemakers and defibrillators, shunts to treat liver disease and various treatments for brain aneurysms and vascular malformations.

For patients from all over the Southeast, the opening of UAB’s Heart and Vascular Center means that, in place of invasive surgeries that require a long recovery time, a variety of medical problems will now be treated less invasively, using procedures performed through a small catheter fed through the arteries. “This center represents a new era in heart and vascular care for Alabamians as well as for residents of the southeastern United States,” says UAB cardiologist and Heart and Vascular Center co-director Robert B. Bourge, M.D. With the opening of the new UAB Heart and Vascular Center, people will be getting better faster, and back to their normal lives sooner.

Designed with your comfort in mind.
The center also is designed for the comfort of patients and families so that the experience here is as pleasant as possible. When you walk in, you feel the difference. The spacious waiting room is equipped with lockers so loved ones aren’t burdened with keeping their belongings with them. As you walk the hallways, you notice the warmth of daylight. That’s because the center was designed to maximize the use of available natural light in waiting areas, lounges and hallways. Nobody wants to be in a hospital. The goal, then, is to make your stay as comfortable as possible, and the new UAB Heart and Vascular Center is all about that. Most importantly, though, the new Heart and Vascular Center is about making your stay shorter. And we do that by helping you get better faster.

For more information on UAB’s Heart and Vascular Center, visit our Web site at uabhealth.org/hvc. To schedule an appointment with a UAB physician, call HealthFinder at (205) 934-9999 or 1-800-UAB-8816.