Heart Surgery Offered at Discount Rates : Medicine: Dr. Denton A. Cooley, a pioneer in the implant and transplant fields, has chartered a new business territory.

Heart surgeon Denton A. Cooley is best known for the world’s first successful artificial heart implant and the first successful heart transplant performed in the United States.

He also has charted new medical business territory, with packaged pricing at discount rates for heart operations and cardiovascular treatments.

Others are following his example.

The Texas Heart Institute, a research organization Cooley founded in 1962 and the base of his heart surgery team of six, signed its first contract with Tenneco, a Houston oil company, six years ago. It has since negotiated 22 contracts with corporations and insurance companies.

Cooley said his version of discount heart surgery has been inspired mostly by a desire to offer quality care at affordable fees.

“The medical directors of corporations and insurance companies need help evaluating the care people are receiving,” Cooley said. “I wanted to give them a package at a reasonable cost. I wanted to help eliminate abuse from the health care system.”

Such deals also help Cooley and others who contract out, partly because they keep their operating rooms full.

“If you do a high volume of heart surgery, you can do it less expensively, and you can do it better,” said Jeff Goldsmith, a national adviser on medical care to the accounting firm Ernst & Young.

Packaged pricing is competitive with the growing number of hospitals offering complicated procedures such as organ transplants. For employers, the motivation for choosing recognized leaders is the old idea that “practice makes perfect.”

The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., known for its diagnostic capabilities, sold its first package deal for organ transplants to the Mutual of Omaha insurance company.