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Welcome to the Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara Medical Center Heart Transplant Service
Mission
Our mission is to deliver high quality, compassionate, multidisciplinary care that improves the health and functioning of our members with advanced heart disease or cardiac transplantation.
Vision
Our vision is to provide integrated health care which improves the quality of life and health of our members through education, technology and research.
The Heart Failure-Heart Transplant Program is a regional service based in Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara Medical Center. The program was first developed to provide centralized care for Northern California KP members who are awaiting or have undergone heart transplantation. Since its inception, however, the program has grown to encompass all aspects of end-stage heart failure care – not just transplantation.
Our diverse staff of providers, nurses, and support personnel works together as a team. We offer advanced heart failure consultation and management, cardiac transplant evaluation, post-transplant management, left ventricular assist device evaluation and access to a variety of clinical research trials. We offer both inpatient and outpatient consultation. Following intensive consultation, education and evaluation, the majority of heart failure patients referred to our program, ‘graduate’ back to the care of their local general cardiologist and primary care provider once their symptoms are optimally controlled. We provide ongoing continuity care for patients on the heart transplant waiting list and cardiac transplant recipients.
Our goals are to offer compassionate, quality care to patients with advanced heart disease or those who have undergone cardiac transplantation. We aim to provide education about end-stage heart disease and heart transplant management and expert consultation to our fellow providers regarding the care of these patients. We strive to critically evaluate new technology and therapy for the treatment of advanced heart failure and transplant recipients. Through our involvement in teaching and research, we maintain close ties with the cardiac transplant program at Stanford University Medical Center.
We believe the patient and his/her caregiver are integral members of the health care team. Together we strive to achieve high-quality care which optimizes the patient’s functional capacity and quality of life. Because we are never able to ‘cure’ heart disease, our goal becomes helping patients find the best medication regimen, surgical options, and self-management techniques to control their disease. We also believe it is important to educate patients to communicate articulately about their disease and symptoms. By evaluating individuals as a whole we are often able to improve symptom control.
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