As part of a trend among cardiology and heart surgery programs across the country, Presbyterian Hospital announced a partnership Thursday with the Cleveland Clinic's renowned Heart and Vascular Institute.

Patients from the Charlotte area could travel to Ohio for procedures, such as heart and lung transplants, not offered at Presbyterian. But more often, local patients will benefit from access to new treatments more quickly, said Paul Wiles, chief executive officer of Novant Health, Presbyterian's parent company.

Presbyterian already offers heart services through physicians at Mid Carolina Cardiology and Hawthorne Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgeons. But Wiles said those teams of doctors, nurses and other care providers will "only be satisfied if they are providing the best treatment options in the country."

Cleveland Clinic's heart institute has been rated No. 1 in the nation for heart care by U.S. News & World Report for 17 consecutive years.

"If you want to be the best, affiliate with the best," Wiles said. "They've developed a level of outcomes that we're probably not going to do on our own."

In addition to improving quality, Wiles said the affiliation should lead to more affordable care. "Lowe's did not go to the Cleveland Clinic because it was going to cost them more," he said.

Wiles was referring to the deal announced last year by Mooresville-based Lowe's, the national home-improvement retailer. Lowe's offers full-time employees the choice to have selected heart surgery at the Cleveland Clinic instead of a local hospital. Even with the extra cost of travel and living expenses in Ohio, Lowe's said the deal will help control rising health care costs.

Previous partnerships

The Novant-Cleveland Clinic affiliation is not the first such collaboration for a Charlotte-area hospital. In 2010, CaroMont Health, which operates Gaston Memorial Hospital, announced a partnership with Columbia HeartSource, part of New York Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center. CaroMont doctors visit the N.Y. hospital, and N.Y. doctors have scrubbed in on surgeries at Gaston Memorial. Doctors confer about patient cases weekly, and CaroMont offers procedures that weren't available before.

"This is really a new paradigm in medicine," said Dr. Paul Kurlansky, a cardiac surgeon with Columbia HeartSource. It's a way for top-tier academic medical programs to share what they know with community hospitals and begin to reduce disparities in medical care across the U.S., Kurlansky said. "You will start seeing this increasingly throughout the country."

Officials from Novant and the Cleveland Clinic announced the affiliation at a news conference Thursday attended by more than 100 people, including Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx and several other elected officials, as well as doctors and nurses from the Presbyterian heart program.

Later in the day, the same officials made a similar announcement at Forsyth Medical Center in Winston-Salem, which will also affiliate with the Cleveland program.

Officials would not disclose financial terms of the affiliation. The launch date is Jan. 1.

The Cleveland Clinic has 12 other affiliations with hospitals around the country, including two others in the Carolinas - Cape Fear Valley Medical Center in Fayetteville and McLeod Health in Florence, S.C. The partnership with Novant is the Ohio facility's first that includes cardiology as well as heart surgery.

Dr. Joseph Cacchione, chairman of strategic operations for the Cleveland heart program, said the affiliations have resulted in improvements in quality and safety. Doctors from Cleveland will not come to Charlotte to perform surgery, he said. But Presbyterian physicians will participate in Cleveland Clinic training programs and collaborate with colleagues there during visits and teleconferences. Charlotte-area patients will benefit from the latest research and clinical trials available.

"We take care of the sickest patients in the country, and we do it better than anybody else," Cacchione said. "We are looking for strategic partners across the country. They (Novant) are operating at a very high level right now, both in cardiology and cardiac surgery. (This affiliation will) take them just a little bit further up the ladder."

View from Sanger institute

Charlotte's other major hospital, Carolinas Medical Center, provides cardiac care - including heart transplants - through the 50-year-old Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute. This summer, Sanger hired Dr. Charles Bridges, a prominent heart surgeon from the University of Pennsylvania, as chairman of CMC's department of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery. He replaced Dr. Francis Robicsek, who was part of the team that performed the first heart transplant in Charlotte in 1986.

When asked about the Presbyterian-Cleveland Clinic affiliation, Sanger president Dr. Paul Colavita said he is "supportive of any positive news regarding the enhancement of patient care in the region." But he said Sanger has never sought such an affiliation because "we think we can do it ourselves."

"If you have a high-quality transplant program in your hometown, why would you want to travel to Cleveland with your entire family to have a transplant?" Colavita asked. "There's really no need for people to travel to Cleveland to get their heart care. ...We're like the Cleveland Clinic in Charlotte. We just don't have the name they have."

Affiliation talks between Novant and the Cleveland Clinic stemmed from a conversation several years ago between Wiles and Dr. Toby Cosgrove, chief executive of the Cleveland Clinic. "There is a lot of synergy between the two organizations," Cacchione said. "The value system is the same. There is this quest to improve all the time."

When asked if the affiliation is partly a marketing effort, Wiles said: "I'd be lying if I told you branding is not going to be important. ... But that is not the primary focus. ...If your study partner is at the top of the class, you're going to get some benefit out of that. ...We will fulfill on that promise."