10 www.review.netGULF COAST BUSINESS REVIEW

MAY 4 – MAY 10, 2012

Doctors and administrators at Tampa General Hospital’s organ transplant program say being big was never the

goal, but a recent feat turns that premise up-side down.

The accomplishment: The unit, with 500 transplants performed, moved up six spots on the list of highest volume transplant centers in the country in 2011, from 10th to fourth.

Only the UCLA Health System in Los An-geles, California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco and New York-Presbyterian Hospital performed more transplants in 2011, according to Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network data. There are 258 solid organ transplant centers in the country, and the TGH program is the largest in the Southeast.

Moreover, OPTN, a division of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, reported all five of TGH’s specific trans-plant programs were among the 10 busiest centers in the country last year. It’s the first time that’s happened in the history of the TGH transplant program, which dates back to 1974, when the hospital first successfully performed a heart transplant. Tampa Gen-eral is a nonprofit hospital, with 1,018 beds and 6,900 employees. It had about $1.2 bil-lion in 2011 revenues.

The five transplant programs at TGH are heart, kidney, kidney-pancreas, liver and lung. The hospital has also performed pe-diatric kidney transplants. But the fact that solid organs are literal life-and-death com-modities, where transplant program growth is totally predicated on supply of those or-gans, is what makes the success standout,

hospital officials say. “It’s not a widget,” says Angie Korsun, the

TGH transplant program administrator, “where you can turn around and say ‘if I set my machine at this speed, I can make 1,000 widgets, instead of 750 widgets.’”

Dr. Victor Bowers, one of the lead TGH transplant surgeons, adds that the sheer number of transplant surgeries pales when compared to how people do, and live, after they get replacement organs. “You can in-crease your numbers,” Dr. Bowers says, “but if you don’t have good patient results, then you’re not really doing a service.”

Nonetheless, a large, and growing, organ transplant program can provide a big boost to a medical center. For one, the notoriety can raise community awareness of the entire hospital. Plus, a publicized organ donor story can draw interest in a transplant program’s lifeline: More donors and more organs.

The revenues a transplant program can generate are also significant. For example, the average estimated hospital admission fee nationwide for a heart transplant patient in 2011 was $634,300, according to the United Network of Organ Sharing. The nonprofit network helps the federal government man-age the nation’s organ transplant system.

The average hospital admission fee for a

single lung transplant in 2011 was $302,900, the network estimates. Other average esti-mates from the network: A liver transplant was $316,900; a pancreas was $108,900; and a kidney transplant was $91,200.

TGH officials declined to elaborate on spe-cific transplant program revenues.

“It’s profitable, but it’s not as profitable as people may think,” says Korsun. “Even with all the technology out there, it’s still a labor

intensive business and an expensive under-taking. This program certainly utilizes a sig-nificant amount of the hospital’s resources.”

Mark Wemple

Dr. Victor Bowers and Angie Korsun have helped grow the transplant program at Tampa General Hospital. Korsun, the transplant program administrator, says she wants to continue to grow the unit carefully.

REVIEW SUMMARY

Business. Tampa General Hospital, TampaIndustry. Health careKey. Hospital’s transplant program per-formed 500 surgeries last year, the fourth-highest volume in the country.

HEALTH CARE by Mark Gordon | Deputy Managing Editor

Beat Goes

On The largest organ transplant

program in the Southeast is run out of a Gulf Coast hospital. Size didn’t come

easy, though, and there are several potential roadblocks

to continued growth.

TOP PROGRAMSThe transplant program at Tampa General Hospital is the fourth largest in the country, according to Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network data. Here’s a list of the top 10 programs, and the amount of transplants performed in 2011:

Program TransplantsUCLA Health System, Los Angeles 633 California Pacific Medical Center, San Francisco 544New York-Presbyterian Hospital, New York 518Tampa General Hospital, Tampa 500Jackson Health System, Miami 467 Indiana University Health, Indianapolis 455University of Wisconsin Hospital, Madison 445Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Chicago 440Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland 439University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia 424

Source: Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, Tampa

AT A GLANCE

CEO: Ron HytoffEmployees: 6,900Beds: 1,018 total beds (959 for acute care, 59 for rehabilitation care)Services: TGH has the only Level I trauma center in West-Central Florida. Also has 43 surgical suites, including six for cardiac care and eight for OB/GYN. It’s one of four regional burn centers and one of 16 compre-hensive stroke centers in Florida.Medical school: It’s the main teaching hospital for the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine.Revenues: $1.03 billion in fiscal 2010, up 9.3% from $945 million in 2009. Hospital had approximately $1.2 billion in 2011 rev-enues. TGH also posted an operating loss of $13.1 million in the first quarter, according to an April 3 report from Moody’s Inves-tor Service. Revenues dropped 3.5% in the quarter, Moody’s reports, and expenses grew 2.1%. Moody’s says it put TGH’s debt on review for possible downgrade due to the loss.

Source: Tampa General Hospital, Moody’s Investor Service

GULF COAST BUSINESS REVIEWMAY 4 – MAY 10, 2012 www.review.net 11

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Carl Lindell Jr., founder of LIN-DELL CAPITAL, LLC, has an-nounced the expansion of its loan portfolio to include a local entre-preneur with 51 rental homes and another with a fully leased medical center in Brandon.

Lindell said “The demand for a lender with over 40 years of lo-cal business experience continues to increase and presents us with unique lending opportunities.” “With our longtime presence in the Tampa Bay area, Lindell Capital has become a natural addition to the Lindell Family group of com-panies, which include Lindell In-vestments and Lindell Properties.”

Dennis Slater, Executive Vice President and CFO for Lindell, said “We expect continued economic growth in the Southwest Florida area. There is increasing opportu-nity to restart local area projects, creating an affordable end use, in both the commercial and residen-tial markets.”

“These two new loan requests were presented to us by local busi-ness entrepreneurs, with a sound business plan and a history of suc-cess, but were unable to secure traditional credit facilities. We ap-proved and funded the loans within thirty days.”

Slater added, “Our ability to close loans is attracting many local business owners, their CPAs and Advisors, with solid acquisition and business plans for review.”

Lindell ended his announce-ment with the simple statement, “If the request makes good business sense, we’ll consider the loan.”

Lindell Capital Increases Lending

PortfolioWith loans on Rental Homes and Brandon

Medical Center

LINDELL CAPITALEmail requests to:

slater@lindellproperties.com813.286.3807

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Not only for the cost of the surgery, says Korsun, but in other key areas, like equip-ment, training and employees. The trans-plant program utilizes 120 hospital employ-ees at any given time, from intensive care nurses to dietary staff to surgeons.

Symbiotic success The TGH transplant program isn’t only

one of the biggest in the country, it’s also one of the more unique. That’s because it isn’t run exclusively out of a teaching hospital, which is the foundation for most other large

transplant programs. The hospital is con-nected with the USF Health Morsani Col-lege of Medicine, but most of the surgeons aren’t professors.

Instead, the transplant program is a part-nership with The LifeLink Transplant Insti-tute, a subsidiary of Tampa-based LifeLink Foundation. A nonprofit overseen by the National Organ Transplant Act Congress passed in 1984, LifeLink procures the organs TGH uses in the transplant surgeries. The group covers 15 counties in west and central Florida, including the entire Gulf Coast ex-

UPCOMING

CALENDAR OF EVENTS

Mark Wemple

Dr. Victor Bowers and Angie Korsun have helped grow the transplant program at Tampa General Hospital. Korsun, the transplant program administrator, says she wants to continue to grow the unit carefully.

MAY 17SOX TECHNOLOGY: Steve Conley, director of information tech-nology for the Boston Red Sox, will be the keynote speaker at the Southwest Florida Regional Technology Partnership’s fourth an-nual awards ceremony. The event will run from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Pelican Clubhouse, 9802 Pelican Preserve Blvd., Fort Myers. For more information visit swfrtp.org.

RESIDENTIAL REAL ESTATE: A group of residential real estate experts will be speaking at a meeting of the Collier Building Industry Association. They include: David Gordley of IberiaBank, Chris Hall of Luxury Home Solutions, Mike Hughes of the Naples Area Board of Realtors, Richard McCormick from Pulte Homes, Pat Neal of Neal Communities and Craig Perry from Centerline Homes. The event will start at 5:30 p.m. at The Club at Olde Cypress, 7165 Treeline Drive, Naples. For more information visit the association’s Website at cbia.net or call 239-436-6100.

NATIONALLY RANKED The transplant program at Tampa General Hospital specializes in five areas: heart, kidney, kidney-pancreas, liver and lung. Here’s a breakdown of where each program ranks nationwide.

Program 2011 Transplants National RankingHeart 58 5th Kidney 240 10th Kidney-pancreas 20 6th Liver 126 9thLung 56 8th

Conley

cept for Collier County, which is part of an-other organization.

The other side of the partnership, surgery and patient recovery, falls to the Tampa Gen-eral Medical Group. That practice was cre-ated in 2010, and includes doctors who once only worked for LifeLink.

The partnership is symbiotic. “Our ability to perform 500 transplants is a direct result of LifeLink’s ability to acquire the organs,” TGH President and CEO Ron Hytoff says in a press release.

Adds Korsun: “This isn’t a situation where one person does this. Transplantation is truly something only a team can do.”

Korsun also says the TGH transplant pro-gram has a high tolerance for unusual cases — another aspect of the unit’s uniqueness. “We do a number of high-risk patients that many other transplant centers wouldn’t con-sider,” says Korsun. “I think that speaks to the talent we have.”

High-risk ranges from how sick a patient is to someone with an illness separate from the organs. A patient’s age can complicate trans-plant surgery, too, much like the controversy generated when former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, at 71, recently received a heart transplant.

Bowers says TGH strives to make all trans-plant surgeries look routine. “When you pull it off, it seems as simple as getting a haircut,” says Bowers. “But it isn’t. It’s very compli-cated.”

Large needsMedical complexities aside, the TGH

transplant program faces several other po-tential hurdles to continued growth.

A constant one is organ supply. Nearly 140,000 people nationwide are on a wait-ing list for an organ transplant, according to TGH. The list is about 4,000 in Florida, including 600 people in the Greater Tampa area who await a kidney, says Dr. Bowers.

That’s why organ donor education and outreach is a key focus at LifeLink. “We are completely dependent on the number of do-nors in the community,” says Bowers. “We have a huge patient supply and a huge need from our communities.”

The federal health care overhaul, currently in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court, will also play a role in the future of the program, says Korsun. “(Transplant surgery) is an ex-pensive process,” says Korsun. “Patients need to have insurance.”

The costs, furthermore, don’t end after the surgery. For instance, anti-rejection medi-cations, which help the body adjust to the organ, are one of the pricier post-operation costs. The first year, says Korsun, could cost a patient $20,000.

Korsun, a nurse who got into transplant work in New York more than 20 years ago, says another worry she has is state Medicaid funding. She kept close tabs on the situation in Arizona in 2010, when Gov. Jan Brewer cut Medicaid funding that covered some or-gan transplants. Some of that funding has since been restored.

While those outside threats loom, Korsun says her day-to-day focus remains the same: to grow smartly.

“Certainly, as an organization we want to grow (and) stay in this top stratosphere,” Korsun says. “But when you are growing you have to be careful about controlled growth. We always have to be fiscally prudent.”

Angie Korsun, TGH transplant program administrator: “We do a number of high-risk patients that many other transplant centers wouldn’t consider. I think that speaks to the talent we have.’