Taking Cardiology into Patients’ Neighborhoods

After nearly two decades of community outreach, the cardiology division is expanding its reach by teaming up with primary care practices across New York City.

Several days a week, Columbia interventional cardiologist Babak “Bobby” Hassid, MD, travels to select primary care practices to take Columbia’s top-notch cardiology specialists closer to home for patients whose communities often lack such providers. At each office, Dr. Hassid meets with the practice’s patients and offers a full range of cardiovascular care, from a blood pressure check to a consultation regarding new-onset chest pain to a follow-up after a massive heart attack.

“We have no expectations of what we’re going to see,” says Dr. Hassid, assistant professor of medicine at VP&S. “We’re equipped to do it all.”

In less than a year, the community outreach program has added more than a dozen primary care practices as partners. With some 20 locations in northern Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens, the outreach practice sees upwards of 150 patients each week.

Martin B. Leon, MD, chief innovation officer for the cardiology division, hired Dr. Hassid for the outreach role and says the program is meant to make it easier for New York City residents to take advantage of what the medical center offers. “Access to care these days is much more difficult, even in an urban center like ours,” says Dr. Leon, professor of medicine and an interventional cardiologist.

Taking interventional cardiology services to outposts throughout the city gives local patients unique access to the quality of care only Columbia and NewYork-Presbyterian can provide, Dr. Hassid says.

“No matter where we’re seeing patients, patients receive the same care they’d get walking through the door at our own offices,” Dr. Hassid says. “And if they ever need a procedure, whether it’s a stent or a bypass or a pacemaker or ablation, we find the right specialist and arrange for them to come to the hospital.”

Dr. Hassid adds that a goal of the outreach program is to keep as much care in the local community as possible, since patients are more likely to follow through with the care they need when it’s local and convenient. His team can perform echocardiograms and vascular testing on site at the primary care offices, and they refer patients who need stress testing—not usually possible in the office—to a local site in the community.

Patients are generally more comfortable meeting a new doctor or specialist in a location or primary care practice they trust in their own community. Dr. Hassid says he and his team promote “compassionate touch,” an approach that helped a patient get a procedure he needed but was reticent to receive. Dr. Hassid first detected the patient’s blockage with the help of a state-of-the-art CT scan and recommended a stent to relieve symptoms. The patient opted to try medication first, but when his shortness of breath didn’t go away, the patient agreed to have the procedure performed by Dr. Hassid.

“I greeted him when he arrived at the hospital, then visited again afterward,” Dr. Hassid says. “He didn’t know how well he could have felt until he had the blockage fixed. Today he’s feeling great and has adopted a new exercise routine. It gives us all a huge sense of satisfaction. Yes, we’re a big academic institution that does world-class research, but the care patients get is like that of a mom-and-pop practice. They have our number and they feel comfortable calling us with questions and concerns.”

The program’s patient roster is growing by word of mouth, Dr. Hassid says. “Patients see what kind of care you give, and word spreads in the neighborhood that it’s a safe place to come.”

Dr. Leon says the interventional cardiovascular care community outreach program could serve as a model for other cardiology subspecialties and other medical specialties to give more New York City patients access to Columbia specialists.

“In its first year the outreach program has been surprisingly successful,” Dr. Leon says. “It resonates with many of the neighborhood physicians, and we think it has significant growth potential.”