HEART UNIT OPENS
HealthAlliance of the Hudson Valley's cardiac catheterization laboratory is only one in Ulster County
April Simpson had just gotten a hit and was running toward first base during a Kingston City League softball game when she got a sharp pain in her chest.
She didn’t think much of it at first, she said, “I thought I pulled a muscle,” she said. But several days later, when the pains kept coming, the 49-year-old mother of five decided to go to the emergency room at HealthAlliance of the Hudson Valley.
At the hospital, Simpson was diagnosed with a clogged artery — an artery to her heart had been narrowed by a buildup of plaque reducing the blood flow to her heart.
Little did she know then, that only days before WMCHealth had opened a new cardiac catheterization laboratory at the HealthAlliance Broadway campus or that she would be one of the first patients treated in the new facility.
“They noticed right on the spot I had it and said they could do it right there,” said Simpson. “At first I was going to refuse it because it was just going too fast for me, more or less I got scared,” she said. “Then a nurse explained to me that it was either do it now … or risk a heart attack.”
Simpson said she opted for the procedure, which entailed having a stent placed in the artery to her heart, and within days she was back home celebrating the high school graduation of one of her children.
Simpson said she was told that the cardiac catheterization laboratory at HealthAlliance Broadway campus is the only such facility in Ulster County and that had it not opened only weeks earlier, she would have been sent out of the county for the procedure.
“Prior to us having that capability, if a patient were to come to our emergency room with a
heart attack they would be given medication and transferred out to another center that had this capability nearby,” said Dr. Falak Shah, a cardiologist and director of the cardiac catheterization lab.
“In an acute emergent situation, the emergency room would call and would try to get the patient into whatever one is nearby,” he said. “This is not the best way to manage a heart attack.
“This is not 21st-century management, it is 20th-century management,” Shah said.
Prior to the Broadway campus laboratory opening in mid-June, the nearest facility to Kingston that offered the service was Northern Dutchess Hospital, in Rhinebeck. Northern Dutchess Hospital is part of the Nuvance Health, which is also the parent company of Vassar Brothers Medical Center in Poughkeepsie.
Officials held a ribboncutting ceremony for the new lab earlier this month. Shah said that in addition to being able to perform catheterization procedures like balloon angioplasty and stenting, an array of electrophysiology procedures, such as inserting pacemakers, can be performed at the lab.
“Because of this, we can take care of patients right here in the community,” Shah said. “We don’t have to transfer them outside of the community for the care that they need and deserve.”
“The phrase I like to tell my patients is ‘time is muscle, heart muscle. The quicker and sooner we can get that artery open, the less muscle you lose or the less muscle dies,” Shah said.
Shah said being able to perform the procedures at the Kingston hospital provides the added benefit of local follow-up care for the patients, many who are already or will be as a result of the procedure, cardiology patients.
“We have several patients that come into the hospital with emergent heart issues,” said Shah. “The follow-up and care happens here, they don’t have to leave the area, and no one knows this better than our patients,” he said.
The addition of the new service at the Broadway campus comes at a time when WMCHealth is embroiled in a controversy in the community over its plan to permanently eliminate inpatient mental health services that had been offered in Kingston prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In an Aug. 3 statement defending its decision to seek the permanent elimination of those beds, HealthAlliance of the Hudson Valley said “outpatient care for a range of behavioral health conditions is now considered a national norm in this evolving area of healthcare, and the majority of individuals seeking behavioral health assistance at HealthAlliance Hospital are treated and released.”
The hospital said despite the elimination of the inpatient mental health beds, the community will continue to have access to behavioral health services and said the emergency room at HealthAlliance Hospital’s Broadway campus is and will continue to be the access point for those services.
“The HealthAlliance Hospital Emergency Department at 396 Broadway is open all day, every day with the capacity and staffing to meet the current level of community behavioral health needs,”, the statement read.
Inpatient mental health services are available at WMCHealth’s MidHudson Regional Hospital in Poughkeepsie and those in need of acute inpatient substance abuse services can be admitted to HealthAlliance Hospital on Broadway, HealthAlliance stated.