Time to make AAMC cardiac care a reality

Anne Arundel County has actually been waiting far more than two years to get a full-service cardiac surgery program at one of its two excellent hospitals - a wait that forces hundreds of local heart patients a year and their families to deal with the logistical problems of having major surgery in more distant jurisdictions.

But the last two years seemed longer, as they involved waiting out a slow, grueling state administrative procedure that, unfortunately, pitted the county's two hospitals, Anne Arundel Medical Center and Baltimore Washington Medical Center, against each other. Both had plans for top-notch programs, but only one was going to get the all-important certificate of need - state officials made that clear from the start.

The process finally came to an end - we fervently hope - with Thursday's decision by the Maryland Health Care Commission to go with AAMC. Officials of the Annapolis-area hospital believe they'll have the program up and running by the end of the year.

Perhaps it's no great surprise the commission ultimately decided to heed the recommendations in a 147-page report by its reviewer, Dr. Craig Tanio. But the report was vigorously disputed, and not just, as you would expect, by BWMC, which is seeing long-cherished plans put on indefinite hold. There was a challenge from MedStar Health, the parent company of Washington Hospital Center, one of the region's leading cardiac-care facilities. And there was one from Dimensions Health Corp., the parent of Prince George's Hospital Center, arguing that the AAMC program would take cardiac patients from Prince George's County.

And, this being Maryland, politics got involved, with state Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. trying to mobilize Prince George's legislators to lean on the supposedly nonpartisan and technically oriented commission, on the grounds that open-heart surgery at AAMC would threaten the planned Prince George's County Regional Medical Center in Largo.

Given that hundreds of cardiac care patients from Anne Arundel are annually shunted to hospitals in Baltimore, Prince George's and Washington, D.C - not to mention that AAMC is also well-positioned to serve patients from Southern Maryland and the Eastern Shore - such arguments were always far-fetched. With Maryland's population not just growing but getting older, is the state really likely to run short of patients who need cardiac surgery?

We'd like to thank not just Tanio for his work but the commission for shrugging off Miller's political fulminations and sticking to its job. We're sorry about the disappointment for BWMC's officials - actually, there are enough patients here for the Glen Burnie hospital to also have a cardiac surgery program, and it probably will have one at some point in the future.

At any case, the process has been completed, with the i's dotted and the t's crossed. At this point, legal challenges and other maneuvers would serve no purpose except to further delay a service Anne Arundel residents should have had available years ago. "It's time for us to bring a program to Anne Arundel County," said Victoria Bayless, AAMC's president and CEO.

Amen to that.