Report clashes with Delnor Hospital's wishes

Delnor-Community Hospital in Geneva is facing some bumps in the road as it seeks the state's permission to start an open-heart surgery program.

A state health department staff report on the hospital's application says the area served by Delnor doesn't need it, as programs at other hospitals in the area are underused.

But Delnor officials remain optimistic.

"We are intending to address the board. We view this as an important opportunity to dialogue with them," said Brian Griffin, marketing and public relations director.

The Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board is tentatively scheduled to vote on the matter at its Tuesday and Wednesday meeting in Springfield. The state gets to rule on medical facility upgrades and construction in an effort to prevent health care costs from rising due to unneeded duplication or unbalanced distribution of care.

Jeffery Marks, executive secretary to the board, stressed that the health department staff does not make recommendations; the report is merely a record of their findings, he said.

Delnor applied for permission to do the surgeries in December. It does diagnostic and interventional catheterizations of the heart in a lab opened in 2002.

The cardiology practice that supplies the doctors and support staff for 95 percent of the catheterizations done there, including artery-clearing angioplasties, has said it may stop doing so unless on-site open-heart surgery backup is made available, as recommended by the American College of Cardiologists in guidelines updated in 2005.

That medical group performs cardiac procedures at other hospitals throughout Kane County, including Sherman and Provena St. Joseph hospitals in Elgin. Most referrals and transfers from Delnor for heart care are to Sherman.

The state report on Delnor's request says:

• The hospital did not perform the recommended minimum of 750 cardiac catheterizations, nor refer at least 200 patients to another facility for open-heart surgery, during a 12-month period from Oct. 1, 2006, to Sept. 30, 2007. Delnor did 610 catheterizations and referred or transferred 106 patients elsewhere. Presently, it does angioplasties only on patients having heart attacks; elective ones are referred elsewhere or transferred out.

• It would be a "unnecessary duplication of services" because of 50 hospitals within 90 minutes' drive that offer open-heart surgery, more than half are underused, doing fewer than 200 surgeries a year.

• And since all the open-heart surgery providers within 30 minutes of the hospital are underused, allowing Delnor to start would cause a "maldistribution of service" when their patients shift to Delnor.

The report also states Delnor's application doesn't meet state standards because the hospital did not include costs of alternatives to starting an open-heart program, such as recruiting a different cardiology service or dropping angioplasties altogether.

In its application, Delnor said not offering the angioplasties would make the hospital less valuable overall to physicians. It contends there are doctors now that won't send patients to Delnor for heart disease diagnosis because if the patient ends up needing immediate treatment, the patient would have to go elsewhere.

Delnor also wrote in its application that because nearly every other hospital within 90 minutes does open-heart surgeries, patients have come to expect it is something their local hospital can and should handle.