A collaboration between Kentucky Children’s Hospital and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center brings together the expertise of Kentucky’s top hospital and one of the country’s best children’s hospitals to create one of the top pediatric heart programs in the country, according to U.S. News & World Report.
Entering its fifth year, the innovative Joint Pediatric and Congenital Heart Program follows the one-program, two-sites model, which means pediatric cardiology experts and a team of pediatric heart surgeons at Kentucky Children’s Hospital benefit from the support of other pediatric heart specialists at Cincinnati Children’s to provide a full spectrum of children’s cardiology services. This collaboration provides Kentucky families with the reassurance of knowing they have access to exceptional heart treatment for children close to home.
Carl Backer, M.D., is chief of pediatric cardiac surgery and director of the Joint Pediatric Heart Care Program. Backer joins KCH from the Ann & Robert Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, where he served as the surgical director of the pediatric heart transplant program and the A.C. Buehler Professor of Surgery since 2001. He has been an attending surgeon in the division of cardiovascular-thoracic surgery since 1988, and served as head of that division from 2008 to 2018.
On this episode of "Behind the Blue," Backer talks about the state of the program on its fifth anniversary, the importance of the program for the people of Kentucky and more.
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