2 more hospitals oppose Delnor's heart surgery plans

Two more hospitals have objected to Delnor-Community Hospital's request to start doing open-heart surgeries.

Provena St. Joseph Hospital in Elgin and Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood have sent letters to the state health facilities planning board, which gets to vote on Delnor's request.

Loyola says having open-heart surgeries at Delnor unnecessarily duplicates services for the area, and that there are plenty of places nearby for people to have such surgeries.

"The number of existing programs serving in the area around Delnor Hospital should be sufficient to continue to serve the needs of the population for the foreseeable future," wrote Trisha Cassidy, senior vice president of the Loyola University Health System.

Cassidy also wrote that because the number of surgeries performed at a facility correlates to the success of those surgeries, taking surgeries away from other hospitals would decrease the quality of the surgeries.

That's what St. Joseph officials believe; it estimates it will lose 10 open-heart surgery cases a year to Delnor-Community, wrote William A. Browne, president and chief executive officer.

From October 2006 to October 2007 six patients were directly transferred from Delnor to Loyola for open-heart surgery and one was transferred to St. Joseph. Thirteen other patients -- who were first discharged to their homes -- ended up getting open-heart surgery at Loyola, and none did at St. Joseph, according to Delnor's application for permission.

OSF St. Anthony Medical Center in Rockford objected in a letter in January, contending the quality of its program would be reduced if it lost its Kane and DeKalb county patients to Delnor.

The objections do not surprise Delnor officials.

"It is such a normal part of the process," said Deborah Danner, senior public relations specialist at Delnor.

There are 51 hospitals within a 45-minute drive of Delnor that provide open-heart surgeries. Within 30 minutes, only three hospitals don't do it: Kishwaukee in DeKalb, GlenOaks in Glendale Heights and St. Alexius in Hoffman Estates. That, Delnor has argued, means people have come to expect they can get comprehensive cardiac care, including open-heart procedures, close to their homes.

Delnor is approximately 37 miles away from Loyola, 12 miles away from St. Joseph, and 53 miles from St. Anthony's.

The public comment period on the application ends June 11. Written responses to those comments are due June 27, and the state board is tentatively scheduled to consider the application in July.