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California Pacific Medical Center has hired away the former chief of cardiac surgery from Lucile Packard Children's Hospital as the San Francisco hospital seeks a bigger role in heart surgery.
Dr. Michael Black, a pioneer in repairing heart defects through a small hole in the chest, has been working at CPMC since early April.
By hiring him as surgical director of its pediatric and adult congenital heart program, Sutter Health affiliate CPMC has brought in expertise and talent that will allow the hospital to grow a pediatric program with the kind of services for newborn babies offered at Packard and University of California San Francisco.
Those programs, staffed by teams of highly trained surgeons, operate on hundreds of babies a year to repair congenital heart defects. CPMC, which delivers 6,000 babies a year, wants to be able to treat more patients with heart defects rather than sending them out, in some cases to UCSF.
A new competitor
Competition in pediatric heart care between Packard, at Stanford University, and UCSF has been high profile. The two have battled for prestige in caring for infants with rare heart defects. In 2001, Packard's program gained...