UH Harrington Heart & Vascular Institute

My husband just had his aorta replaced here. Dr Halim is amazing. Very easy to talk to and explains things well. I cannot say enough about the Cardiac Intensive Care nurses! Anthony, Elizabeth, and the young male Italian nurse were nothing short of awesome. In the step down, the nurses thus far are also very knowledgeable and caring.

I owe my life to the excellent care I received at UH Harrington Heart & Vascular Institute over the last seven years! I have a congenital issue with my aorta that claimed my father's life and almost took me in 2016, but the experts here stopped that with an emergency endovascular surgery (technology that was not available when my father died from a ruptured aneurysm in 1992). I have seen multiple physicians in the UH cardiovascular department (cardiologist, electrophysiologist, vascular surgeons) and all have been kind, attentive, and thorough. I want it noted that I had to have follow-up surgeries to fix my aorta completely--one was a very delicate and complex open-heart surgery to fix the aortic arch by replacing it with a graft--and I have come through with flying colors! I inherited high blood pressure issues that went uncontrolled by previous non-UH cardiologists who just gave me more of the same medicines with the same results, but as soon as I got a UH cardiologist, my blood pressure medication was re-evaluated and it was quickly brought down to more normal levels--something previous cardiologists didn't do for years. Getting an appointment hasn't always been easy, but in 2023 UH started using MyChart, so communicating and getting appointments is much easier (and less frustrating) than it was. I was in three different health systems until 2016 when I settled in with UH and I can say without reservation that my care at UH Harrington Heart & Vascular Institute has been exceptional!

Had Mitral valve repair at Cleveland Clinic, 10 years later needed a valve replacement and had a mechanical valve put in at UH, 6 months later the valve was coming out, detaching. No evidence of infection to cause the issue, just bad work. Had a third open heart surgery to replace what UH put in, 8 months now, so far so good. But the damage they did cannot be undone, I will not go to any UH facilities, we have had to correct multiple false Billing invoices of services that never happened. Just too difficult to deal with.

I have a 1 in a million valve heart defect that has been monitored at the Cleveland Clinic for over 10 years. My insurance changed and so did the access to my CCF doctors. The Cardiologist at UH do not communicate with with me, there is no way to contact his office directly on MyChart. Instead I get a phone call stating that my "heart health team" made a decision to do more testing--they forgot to include the most important person in this heart health discussion, me!!! These UH doctors will not use the 10 years plus of testing or tell me why they want to do more testing but want me to pay for expensive, somewhat invasive and time consuming procedures!! Why? For what purpose?! Finally, the doctors at UH have contradicted everything thing I learned about symptoms of increased disfunction of my heart--apparently light headedness is no long an indication of a heart valve disorder--only breathlessness is. Absolutely awful experience!!

Worst patient/customer care I've experienced in a long time. So goes the medical industry as a whole. They are more concerned about the bottom dollar rather than caring for the patients. We are human beings and deserve to be treated as such. Our medical records are ours. Treat people like they're people not like they're a neusance. You should be ashamed of yourself. If you want a good example of the poor state of our medical community please go to the UH Herrington Heart & Vascular Center. You will be amazed.