The North Shore-LIJ Health System gets state approval to extend its cardiac surgery program to Southside Hospital in Bay Shore.

By: Claude Solnik

In a decision that would make a delicate surgery more accessible to many Long Islanders, Good Samaritan Hospital Medical Center and Southside Hospital have won the support of a state authority to launch an open heart surgery program.

The New York State Hospital Review and Planning Council voted to recommend that State Health Commissioner Dr. Richard Daines approve programs at both hospitals, which are located several miles from each other on Montauk Highway.

Although the hospitals haven’t yet formally been approved, the recommendations in general are followed.

Approvals are likely within 30 to 60 days of the Sept. 30 date on which both hospitals were notified of the recommendation.

In order to create these open heart surgery programs, both hospitals will rely on open heart surgeons who also practice at other hospitals within their respective systems.

St. Francis Hospital in Roslyn will send a heart surgeon to Good Samaritan Hospital in West Islip. Both hospitals are members of Catholic Health Services of Long Island.

The North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System will send an open heart surgeon to perform operations at Southside, in Bay Shore, which is a member of that system.

Dr. Larry Altschul, Good Samaritan’s medical director of cardiology, said his hospital looks forward to “continuing our collegial partnership” with St. Francis Hospital to develop an open heart surgery program.

In addition to CHS and North Shore-LIJ, Stony Brook University Hospital and Winthrop-University Medical Center offer open heart surgery.

But in Suffolk County, which had 1,518,475 residents as of 2009, according to the U.S. census, only Stony Brook has offered the service.

Both Southside and Good Samaritan argued this imposed a hardship on residents, particularly those who weren’t insured, who often had to travel far for care.