Cleveland Clinic picks North Shore as N.Y. partner

The Cleveland Clinic and the North Shore-LIJ Health System have agreed to a partnership that makes the 17-hospital system an exclusive member in an alliance with the Clinic’s Cardiovascular Specialty Network.

The Cleveland Clinic Heart & Vascular Institute announced that it selected North Shore-LIJ Health System to be its exclusive New York metro-area member, making North Shore-LIJ Health System only the second alliance member in the U.S. In 2013, MedStar Heart Institute in Washington, D.C., joined with the Cleveland institute to serve the greater D.C. area.

According to the Cleveland Clinic and the North Shore-LIJ Health System, the alliance will expand treatment options and clinical trial opportunities for cardiac patients in the New York metropolitan area. “That’s a huge differentiator in a market well regarded for the quality of cardiac care,” Stanley Katz, MD, senior vice president of cardiovascular services at North Shore-LIJ, said in a release.

The health system includes the North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, LIJ Medical Center in New Hyde Park, Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, Staten Island University Hospital and Southside Hospital in Bay Shore. Collectively, those hospitals perform more than 2,700 surgeries, 7,100 interventional and 5,200 electrophysiology procedures annually, North Shore-LIJ Health System claimed. North Shore University Hospital, which will serve as the destination site for Cleveland Clinic referrals, performs about 700 open-heart surgeries, 2,200 interventional procedures and 1,300 electrophysiology procedures annually.

This is not the first collaboration between the Cleveland and New York health systems. They partnered in 2012 under the Cleveland Clinic’s Innovation Alliance, which has the goal of commercializing technologies developed in the institutions.

The current alliance followed a yearlong assessment of programs, infrastructure, resources and outcomes to ensure compatibility. In a press release, Toby Cosgrove, MD, president and CEO of Cleveland Clinic, said that the two organizations were committed to the use of objective data and metrics to improve patient care. “This is how healthcare becomes safer, less expensive and more efficient,” he said.