Trinity Hospital of Augusta will be getting the long-sought ability to perform certain heart procedures, but Doctors Hospital won't. At least not yet, though that could change soon, Doctors CEO Shayne George said.

At issue are therapeutic cardiac catheterizations, among the more commonly performed heart procedures in the U.S., with 661,000 in 2006, according to the National Hospital Discharge Survey.

Hospitals could perform diagnostic catheterizations, but Georgia had limited therapeutic procedures, such as balloon angioplasty, to hospitals that also had an open heart surgery program as backup, said Clyde Reese, the general counsel for the Georgia Department of Community Health.

"Hospitals had always wanted to try to be able to do the therapeutic caths without the on-site open heart program," he said. "And they had pointed to some recent studies in the last few years that said you could begin to do these without open heart backup because the technology had advanced to the point where you could do that safely without having that open heart capability right there at the same facility."

Last year, Senate Bill 433 overhauled Georgia's Certificate of Need licensing program and provided an exemption for hospitals to apply to do therapeutic catheterizations as long as they met certain criteria. Sixteen hospitals applied in May, and last week 13 of them, including Trinity, were accepted.

Doctors was rejected because, Mr. Reeves said, it did not include documentation of an agreement with a service that could provide ambulances with an intra-aortic balloon pump to safely transport patients to an open-heart facility. Mr. George said the information was provided and the facility will likely contest the denial in an administrative hearing soon.

"This is a technicality that we hope to get through here pretty quickly," he said.

Trinity will still have to undergo a site visit, probably in the next two to three weeks, and there is a chance another hospital could contest the state's approval, said Trinity CEO James Cruickshank. But the hospital is going to move forward, he said.

The old St. Joseph Hospital had been doing a lot of diagnostic caths, about 350 to 400 a year, before it fell on hard financial times and its equipment became obsolete, Mr. Cruickshank said. The hospital was sold, and the cath lab was replaced in 2007.

"It will really give us the opportunity to rebuild that cardiology service line," he said. "So we are very excited about it."

Doctors, which performs 200 to 300 diagnostic caths a year, could also see significant growth once it gains approval, which could be in 60 to 90 days, Mr. George said.

"That would be a huge step for us," he said. "A lot of this is physician driven. So once we have the service and the physicians supporting us, those numbers could grow. I would anticipate they would.