Peterborough, N.H.-based Monadnock Community Hospital is opening its own cardiology department in the fall, aiming to address a care shortage, according to a July 30 report from The Keene Sentinel.
Since the early 2000s, Monadnock Community has been in a cardiology care partnership with Manchester, N.H.-based Catholic Medical Center, but that dissolved July 1.
CMC dissolved the partnership in an effort to "serve more patients in the Manchester community" and manage finances more efficiently, Laura Montenegro, a spokesperson for CMC, told the Sentinel.
Monadnock will likely only be able to offer limited cardiology services, including echocardiograms, until its new department opens in October. Otherwise, the system will have to refer patients to Catholic Medical or other hospitals for cardiac care, according to the report.
"There is a lot of need for cardiology services in this region," Daniel Perli, MD, Monadnock's chief medical officer, told the Sentinel. "Patients are having to wait sometimes months and they're often having to travel to Manchester or Nashua or Keene to get cardiology services, and sometimes, even if they're willing to travel, there [are] long waits."
Though the new heart center has yet to open, Monadnock has already fielded 400 calls from patients requesting to be added to a waitlist for appointments.
The hospital will expand access to cardiology services by having its own department that can offer care five days per week, instead of three or four under the previous model.
Monadnock hired Robert Spencer, MD, and Brooke O'Connor, MSN, APRN, who previously worked together at Cheshire Medical's cardiology department in Keene, N.H.