Quality Reports - Herma Heart Center

Surgical Volume - by Age at Time of Operation

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Why we measure it - Research shows that physicians and hospitals that treat a large number of patients tend to provide better care and have improved outcomes for treatments and procedures.

What this means - Herma Heart Center consistently performs more than 700 congenital heart operations a year, making it among the largest programs in the country. A majority of our heart patients are younger than 1 year of age. In addition, many patients outside the state choose our care every year.

About the data - This data reflects all patients with a surgical heart procedure in calendar years 2006-2008. This data is submitted to external databases for benchmarking purposes.

Related dimensions of care:

What we're doing to provide the best care:

• Children's Hospital is one of a few hospitals in the country to use a Berlin Pediatric Heart - a new artificial heart - to bridge children to heart transplantation. Similar technology also is used at the hospital, but the Berlin Pediatric Heart is smaller and better able to sustain small children.
• We expanded our clinic space and added cardiac critical care beds with the hospital tower construction completed in spring 2009.
• We offer outreach clinics and surgical sites to reduce the number of trips many families need to make to our Milwaukee hospital location. Our specialists travel to or are located in several cities throughout Wisconsin and northern Illinois to provide care closer to where our patients live. In addition to the main location in Milwaukee, current clinic locations include New Berlin, Neenah, Racine, Wis., and Gurnee, Ill. Additional surgical locations include Froedtert Hospital in Milwaukee, and Saint Joseph's Hospital in Marshfield, Wis.
• We have a highly specialized Children's Transport Team available 24 hours a day to stabilize and transport seriously sick and injured infants and children to our center.
• More than 1,500 transports are provided each year. In collaboration with Herma Heart Center, a mobile ECMO program was developed, making Children's Transport 1 of only 4 transport programs in the country to transport children on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, a type of heart/lung bypass.
• We train future pediatric cardiologists in our fellowship program and are actively recruiting additional pediatric cardiologists to care for the ever-increasing number of patients who seek our care.