Projo 7 to 7 News Blog

Brigham and Women's Hospital, in Boston, plans to work with Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island on beefing up the Pawtucket hospital's cardiac and emergency services.

The new "clinical affiliation," announced Tuesday, brings the imprimatur of a famous Harvard-affiliated institution to a small Pawtucket hospital (which is affiliated with Brown University's medical school). It could also lead to Rhode Island residents who need heart surgery traveling to the Brigham rather than Rhode Island or Miriam Hospitals.

The move comes as people living in the northern half of Rhode Island are receiving mailed advertisements from Brigham and Women's and its sister hospital, Massachusetts General, inviting them to a newly built medical facility in Foxboro, Mass.

Francis R. Dietz, Memorial president, said his goal was to bring more patients to his hospital, including those who live in nearby Massachusetts. "Our patients have got to have confidence and believe that if they choose Memorial, they're going to get the best that is available," Dietz said.

"This allows us to pursue clinical programs that a community hospital just couldn't do on its own," said Dr. Andrew W. Artenstein, physician-in-chief. While Memorial now diagnoses and treats heart attacks and heart failure, Artenstein says he hopes the Brigham relationship will enable Memorial to offer additional procedures on blood vessels outside the heart. The hospital plans to spend $1.5 million to upgrade the equipment in its cardiac catheterization laboratory.

As for patients who need heart surgery, if they want to go to the Brigham, the affiliation with Memorial is designed to make that easier. Patients would receive care before and after surgery from doctors they know at Memorial, and the Memorial doctors would have a relationship with the surgeons at the Brigham.

Memorial officials say they hope that the relationship with the Brigham -- now under a 5-year contract, but intended to be renewed indefinitely -- will make their cardiology and emergency-medicine programs more attractive so the Pawtucket hospital will have an easier time recruiting heads of departments. The top jobs in cardiology and emergency medicine are currently vacant and any new chiefs would be faculty members at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University.

 Tags  Brigham and Women's Hospital heart surgery Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island

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