Sharp OKd for Medicare Heart Transplants

Sharp Memorial Hospital in Kearny Mesa has become the third California hospital to be approved as a Medicare heart transplant facility, the hospital said Wednesday.

The designation by the federal Health Care Finance Administration will allow the hospital to provide heart transplant services to patients covered by the federal government’s insurance program.

The approval means that San Diego-area Medicare patients no longer will have to travel to hospitals at Stanford University or UCLA, the state’s other Medicare-approved facilities, to receive heart transplants, the hospital said.

Sharp is the 29th hospital in the country to receive such approval, the hospital said. Sharp has conducted 55 heart transplants since 1985, and its one-year survival rate of 96% is one of the highest in the country, the hospital said.

Sharp received the state’s approval last May, when 39-year-old Medi-Cal patient Tonda Thomas was admitted to Sharp instead of having to go to UCLA for a heart transplant.

Last March, 19-year-old LeNora Flowers received a heart transplant that was made possible only through a community fund drive. Before Flowers’ operation, another Medi-Cal patient’s transplant was paid for by an anonymous benefactor.

The Medicare designation was termed “the final link in providing a comprehensive cardiac transplant service to this community,” according to Dr. Pat O. Daily, the director of Sharp’s transplant

program.

“The continued success of this program depends on two factors--patients and donor organs,” Daily said. “The medical community can assist by identifying patients who can benefit from a transplant and referring them to us early enough that a transplant can save their life. The people of San Diego can support this program by signing donor cards.”

Daily said the Medicare approval became effective Wednesday.