Akron General Health System wins 5 Cleveland-area cardiologists

Akron General Health System’s latest physician recruitment effort is an affair of the heart.

Five Cleveland-area cardiologists from North Ohio Heart Center recently agreed to join Akron General Partners Physician Group. The heart doctors now practice primarily in southwest Cuyahoga County and Medina and Lorain counties.

On Nov. 22, Drs. Ismail Ahmed, Donald Cho, Atul Hulyalkar, Fernando Mundoz and Qarab Syed will be under a lease agreement to provide general and diagnostic cardiac services for Akron General. Their new Akron-based cardiology practice — to be known as Akron Cardiovascular Associates — will be located in Akron General’s Physician Office Building on the Akron General Medical Center main downtown campus.

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”We’re all very pumped up about coming down to Akron,” Hulyalkar said. ”We’re looking at this as a tremendous opportunity.”

Heart care is one of Akron General’s strengths, but the hospital has seen its market share erode in recent years, said Dr. Tim Stover, president of outpatient services for Akron General.

Two years ago, the Akron area’s largest cardiology practice — Northeast Ohio Cardiovascular Specialists — opted to become part of crosstown rival Summa Health System’s Summa Physicians Inc. Another cardiology practice in the Akron area also affiliated with Cleveland-based University Hospitals in recent years.

”We were seeing our business basically walk out of our hospital to these other areas and other systems,” Stover said. ”Our market share was walking out of our doors.”

Cardiology tends to be a highly competitive and lucrative area for hospitals, particularly as the population ages. At community hospitals across the country, cardiology services can account for a quarter of all hospital stays and 35 percent or more of revenues, according to research by the Center for Studying Health System Change, a national health-care research group.

Akron General and Summa each have been trying to recruit more cardiologists after several heart specialists left the region. Akron General was in the process of recruiting cardiologists when they discovered the five Cleveland-area doctors were looking for a new opportunity, Stover said.

He said the physicians are experienced cardiologists with impressive credentials. ”We’ve always been the leader in heart and vascular in Akron,” Stover said. ”We wanted to get back there. We think we’re on our way.”

Many doctors nationwide have been seeking hospital employment in recent years to ease high malpractice rates, lighten their administrative duties and increase their reimbursements. ”It removes the nuances of billing from us,” Cho said.

Hospitals, in turn, gain a stronger referral base for patients by strengthening their physician affiliations. The five cardiologists decided to join Akron General because they were impressed by the Heart & Vascular Center facility and the opportunities there, Hulyalkar said.

In the early 1990s, Hulyalkar considered working with the former longtime head of the hospital’s cardiology department, Dr. George Litman, who ”made a very positive impression on me,” he said.

The heart doctors ”will work closely with Akron General’s primary-care physicians and provide them with the type of superior cardiology care for which Akron General has been known,” Vincent J. McCorkle, Akron General’s president and chief executive, said in a prepared statement.

”I look forward to them helping grow our cardiac diagnostic business, particularly as it applies to expansion in Montrose, Stow and Green,” he said.