Frederick Health Opens Second Cardiac Catheterization Lab Amid Rising Demand

Frederick Health has opened a second cardiac catheterization lab at its main hospital campus, a $9 million addition the health system says was necessary to keep pace with rising demand for cardiac procedures as Frederick County's population has grown rapidly over the past decade.

The single existing catheterization lab had increasingly become a scheduling bottleneck, hospital officials said, with elective procedures sometimes delayed by weeks and emergency cardiac cases occasionally requiring transfer to Baltimore-area hospitals when the lab was in use for another patient.

"We were in a position where a single lab was trying to serve both our scheduled procedures and any emergency heart attack that came through our doors, and that's simply not sustainable as this county keeps growing," said Frederick Health's chief of cardiology. "Having a second lab means we're not choosing between a scheduled patient and an emergency."

The new lab is equipped to perform both diagnostic catheterizations and interventional procedures such as stent placements, giving the hospital full redundancy for its cardiac catheterization services for the first time. Frederick Health said the addition will also reduce the number of cardiac patients transferred to hospitals outside the county for procedures the hospital can now perform on-site.

Frederick County has been among the fastest-growing counties in Maryland over the past decade, and hospital administrators said the cardiac lab expansion is part of a broader effort to build out specialty capacity that has historically lagged behind the county's population growth.