Bayhealth launches new Heart & Vascular Institute

February 28, 2025 5

DOVER – Just over 20 years ago, Bayhealth doctors performed the first open heart surgery seen in the nonprofit health care system – it’s been building up its cardiovascular efforts ever since.

Now, it is rebranding those services under one name – the Bayhealth Heart & Vascular Institute.

Bayhealth Senior Director of Operations for Cardio Services Ben Collins said the move seeks to help streamline Bayhealth’s cardiovascular efforts for the benefit of its patients and community while also working to become a more attractive organization for new physicians and medical staff to find in their search for the perfect role.

– Advertisement –

“The benefits of combining these is really about patient navigation. By renaming and restructuring our practices under that institute brand, it reduces the confusion and creates a unified identity for all of our cardiovascular services,” Collins told the Delaware Business Times. “As we’ve kind of evolved over the last several years and practices have joined Bayhealth, we’ve kind of continued to have separated practices which can be confusing to someone navigating the system.”

Bringing everyone under the umbrella will help ease the confuse and increase access to care, he continued.

Bayhealth Chief of Medical Cardiology Services Dr. Aditya Sharma said from a clinical standpoint, the move can also serve to benefit the patient experience in the offices themselves, as well.

“We, as clinicians, are partners in the patient’s health care. It’s not that we’re telling them what to do, they’re not telling us what to do. We’re working together to solve their health care problems and address their needs,” he told DBT. “Medicine is very complex. As you can see, medical knowledge doubles every five years and there’s new diseases and new treatments and other things that are available for patients. For us to be together and collaborate improves the quality of health care for patients and allows us to provide the latest, cutting edged care for our patients.”

While the organization also has an oncology institute run in collaboration with Penn Medicine, the move to launch the Bayhealth Heart & Vascular Institute marks the first institute of its kind run solely by Bayhealth.

“The biggest outcome with this is just to know how advanced your cardiovascular care is in your own community hospital. Through this institute and this brand campaign, I want Delawareans that are native and that live near here to understand that they don’t have to drive to Wilmington or Philadelphia to get excellent cardiovascular care,” Collins said.

Delaware’s growth, particularly in its senior population, was also a consideration in the move with physicians and hospital leadership understanding that it also requires additional medical support to handle the new influx of community members.

“Delaware is a growing state with lots [residents the age] of 55 and over retirees coming from states like New Jersey and the Philadelphia area where there are academic centers on every corner and they don’t even have to think about whether they’re going to get the best care in the world. When they move down here, they don’t understand that Bayhealth actually has excellent programming and processes and we’ve been working very hard over the last several years to expand and keep up with all of the technology and advancements,” he added.

The new Bayhealth Heart & Vascular Institute does not have a separate facility at this time. Physicians involved in the institute will continue to practice from their offices, although the organization now has one main phone number for patients to call for care instead of individual numbers for each office.

As leaders look forward to bringing those physicians under one umbrella even more through the institute model, with goals of eventually putting professionals in the same physical space at both the Kent and Sussex campuses, a new designation matches the excitement behind the change. Bayhealth can now tout its national distinction of excellence with the American College of Cardiology and is the only HeartCARE Center in the First State.

– Advertisement –

“I come from Pennsylvania and have worked in very competitive health care systems in the past and what I’ve been really, pleasantly surprised about Delaware has been the commitment and the care that the doctors at Bayhealth have provided for their patients and the commitment that they have to continue to do that despite the change and all of the resilience they have whether it’s through COVID, a change in location, growth and expansion… they’ve really been committed to the community and I think that’s really noteworthy,” Sharma said.

Collins echoed Sharma’s thought, adding that the commitment from those physicians and leaders over the years really helped pave the way to the new Bayhealth Heart & Vascular Institute.