A hospital in Southwest Florida is working to create a center dedicated to fighting cardiovascular disease.
The leaders of NCH say they are on a mission to slow down and even prevent people from dying of heart disease.
NCH plans to build a new state-of-the-art 6-story facility in place of an older building and name it the NCH Heart, Stroke and Vascular Center. The project has a price tag of $150 million.
“We want to do something that’s friendly to the community and at the same time can deliver world-class heart and stroke care,” said Paul Hiltz, president and CEO of the NCH Health Care System.
The only holdup for the project is a City of Naples ordinance that caps building size to three stories.
Hiltz said NCH wants to put all of its heart and vascular specialties under one roof that would include physician offices, operating rooms, cath labs and inpatient private hospital rooms.
“This is a growing area, as you know, the population is slightly older so heart disease and strokes are very real here, we do almost 500 open heart surgeries here a year,” Hiltz said.
During an emergency where minutes matter, NCH wants its heart center in its most central location.
Hiltz said 70% of the demand is within 10 miles of downtown Naples.
Hiltz said he is optimistic it will gain approval.
“The mayor and the city council have been very good to work with. The community is really rallying around this,” Hiltz said.
Hiltz will present his plan to the Naples City Council on March 8. The hospital system plans to host a community open house for neighbors on March 1.
Hiltz said the program is not designed to compete with Lee Health.
“We have a great relationship with Lee health,” Hiltz said. “So we don’t really look at that as competition … We’re we’re really feeling like we’re on the leading edge of the interventional cardiology, the electrophysiology, all the things that heart care needs right now. We’re into it.”
Leslie Richard has lived on Marco Island for 16 years.
She started having heart problems and was happy to have NCH near her.
“I am a very active person and I was just sludgy, very sludgy, very slow, very tired and I’m never tired,” Richard said.
She was thankful she didn’t have to go far for treatment.
“Why would you want to go out of town to have something so personal to you..you would want to have something where you can get corrected right there.. right in your town,” Richard said.