10 years of the Gill Affiliate Network: UK King's Daughters

The Gill Heart & Vascular Institute Affiliate Network launched in 2014 to better connect community hospitals across the Commonwealth with the expertise and resources available at UK HealthCare. Throughout 2024, UK HealthCare is highlighting achievements by the 23 members of the Gill Affiliate Network (GAN) as part of the network’s 10th anniversary celebration.

UK King's Daughters, located in Ashland, Ky., joined GAN in Feb. 2024. For more than a century, it’s adhered to a succinct mission: to care, to serve and to heal. In Dec. 2022, the hospital advanced that mission by officially becoming part of the University of Kentucky.

What are key aspects of your cardiovascular program that people should know about?

Because heart disease is so prevalent in our area, UK King’s Daughters strives to provide accessible, comprehensive, high-quality care to the people of our service area, which includes eastern Kentucky, southern Ohio and western West Virginia. 

Since 1991, UK King’s Daughters has been a leader in heart care services. Today, our cardiovascular program includes nearly 70 physicians, surgeons and advanced practice providers in cardiology, advanced cardiac imaging, cardiothoracic surgery, electrophysiology, heart failure, interventional radiology, structural heart and vascular surgery. Our providers see patients in 14 locations throughout eastern Kentucky and southern Ohio. We offer same-day heart appointments at many of our offices.

We continually strive to provide world-class cardiovascular care to our patients. Our Structural Heart program focuses on treating problems and defects in the structure of the heart, with procedures to minimize stroke risk in patients with atrial fibrillation (left atrial appendage closure); replace leaking aortic valves using minimally invasive techniques (TAVR); treat heart failure patients with mitral valve regurgitation (MitraClip); repair holes in the heart (ASD/VSD/PFO); treat hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (alcohol septal ablation); and heart failure monitoring (CardioMEMS). 

Our vascular team recently performed the state’s first LimFlow procedure, a new technique that can prevent the loss of a foot or leg in patients with chronic, lower-limb threatening ischemia. 

UK King’s Daughters will soon be providing Barostim to patients with systolic heart failure, (HFrEF). The device has been shown to reduce heart failure symptoms, improve quality of life, and reduce the risk of hospitalization and death for these patients. 

Our team has recently begun using CardioCARE, an AI-powered digital health platform, that aids our clinicians in ensuring patients receive the heart diagnostic and treatment services they need when they need them.   

UK King’s Daughters has earned the American College of Cardiology’s National Distinction of Excellence HeartCARE Center designation and has earned accreditations from the ACC in cardiac electrophysiology, transcatheter valve and heart failure. UK King’s Daughters was the first hospital in our region to achieve Chest Pain Center designation, a distinction we have held continuously since 2004.

UK King’s Daughters continually seeks to advance cardiovascular care in our region with the ultimate goal of helping people live longer and healthier lives. 

How has being a part of the Gill Affiliate Network influenced how you care for those in your community?

Although our affiliation has been brief, we have found everyone at GAN to be helpful, encouraging and supportive. We are especially appreciative of Dr. Navin Rajagopalan, who is now coming to our Heart Failure Clinic once per month to see patients with advanced heart failure or who are under consideration for heart transplant. This is an incredible benefit to some of our most vulnerable patients and demonstrates the power of the affiliation in a very real way. The entire GAN team has been supportive and a pleasure to work with. 

Recently, the Gill Heart & Vascular Institute and UK King’s Daughters partnered to develop a heart failure clinic to support patients with advanced heart failure. How do you envision this support impacting patients and the community in the years to come?

UK King’s Daughters Heart Failure Clinics have a long history of providing specialized care for patients with heart failure. As part of our GAN affiliation, we wanted to provide patients with difficult-to-manage and/or exacerbating heart failure symptoms with easier access to a specialist in advanced heart failure and heart transplantation. 

Dr. Rajagopalan has been seeing patients in our Russell, Ky., clinic once a month since January. Patients who have seen him in the clinic are very appreciative of his efforts on their behalf and thankful that they don’t have to drive to Lexington for this level of care. His availability in our clinic provides clinicians with another resource for these patients. Providing hope and help in this way has a dramatic impact, not on the patient alone, but on their families, friends, and the clinicians who care for them. 

How have educational and training opportunities offered by the network contributed to the professional development of your hospital's staff?

We have been working with GAN to provide CME/CNE programs for our team, including a recent presentation on LVAD and a recent program on Cardiology in Transition with Dr. John Gurley. Our cardiology team and leaders find the annual GAN conference to be a great opportunity to extend their knowledge and network with their colleagues. 

We would love to hear about your program’s goals. What are you most looking forward to in the years to come? What does your hospital hope to achieve through its relationship with the GAN over the next month or years?

We look forward to continuing our collaborative relationship with our GAN colleagues over the coming year. Our FY2025 strategic priorities include implementation of the CardioCARE program mentioned previously; installation of a new cath lab; implementation of a tricuspid clip program; and development of a CTO program. 

We will continue to look at ways to improve access to cardiovascular care, including electrophysiology outreach; an emphasis on women’s heart health; and community outreach, including our AED donation program. An important part of our GAN collaboration is laying the groundwork for an ECMO program at UK King’s Daughters.