NYC Health + Hospitals/Elmhurst (N.Y.) opened its Women’s Cardiovascular Institute last February to address disparities in heart care.
“Different populations experience disease differently, face different barriers to care, and often arrive in the health system through different pathways,” Rosy Thachil, MD, director of the hospital’s cardiac intensive care unit and co-founder of the institute, told Becker’s in an upcoming episode of the “Cardiology + Heart Surgery Podcast.”
“If you want to truly deliver effective care, you have to design programs that acknowledge those realities. That realization is one of the driving forces behind launching the Women’s Cardiovascular Institute at Elmhurst. We wanted to create a program where women’s symptoms, risk factors, and life experiences — including things like pregnancy and menopause — are fully integrated into cardiovascular care.” To that end, the heart institute partners with OB-GYN, oncology, lifestyle and primary care providers to provide multidisciplinary care.
The hospital also provides comprehensive cardiovascular care from prevention to critical care, with several initiatives for specialized care, such as a postpartum hypertension program, a post-cardiovascular ICU clinic, and a breast cancer cardiotoxicity program.
The public health system serves one of the most diverse communities in the world, Dr. Thachil said, with over 250 languages spoken in its local community. This fundamentally shaped how it built its women-specific cardiovascular services.
“Many women’s cardiovascular programs around the country are housed within large academic medical centers, but access to specialized cardiovascular care shouldn’t depend on where you live, your insurance status, or which center you have access to,” she said. “It’s really an equity issue, and that’s why we felt strongly about building this program here.”
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