Heart Center

The mission of Kearney's Good Samaritan Heart Center is to provide advanced, comprehensive care close to home, returning you to your life in better health and with a better understanding of living a heart healthy lifestyle.

It's an unfortunate fact: heart disease is the leading cause of death in Nebraska, Kansas and South Dakota. It was with this statistic in mind that Good Samaritan opened the first cardiac catheterization lab in outstate Nebraska in 1990. Since that time, Kearney's Good Samaritan Heart Center has evolved into a full service cardiac and vascular care center providing all adult cardiac and vascular procedures once found only in metropolitan areas. Today hundreds of people come to our facility for a variety of heart procedures.

You are in charge of making sure your heart is as healthy as it can be. This can be a tremendous responsibility. Whether you come to the Good Samaritan Heart Center for a simple test or have had heart surgery, we want you to leave with a better understanding of your heart, how it works and what you can do to make it healthier. 

Heart Center Staff

Kaliprasad Ayala, MD

Cardiology

Paul Bajwa, MD

Cardiology

Brianna Bankson, PA-C

Cardiology

Beth Brey, APRN

Cardiology

Sagar Damle, MD

Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery

Alain Efstratiou, MD

Cardiology

Rick Heirigs, MD

Cardiology

Kristen Hiatt, APRN

Cardiology

Ameeta Martin, MD

Cardiology

Steven Martin, MD

Cardiology

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Chest Pain Accreditation

On June 16, 2005, Good Samaritan was given official Chest Pain Center designation by the Society of Chest Pain Centers and recognized for offering state-of-the-art heart care to its patients.  We were proud to be the first medical facility in the state of Nebraska to receive this accreditation.  Since then only a handful of other medical facilities, all in the Lincoln-Omaha area, have joined us in this achievement.

Being an accredited center means that we follow stricter protocol-driven and systematic guidelines that allow a reduction in time to treatment during the early stages of heart attack, when treatments are most effective.  It also enables us to better monitor patients when it is not clear whether they are having a coronary event; making sure our patients are neither sent home too early nor needlessly admitted.  

As an Accredited Chest Pain Center, Good Samaritan has demonstrated expertise in:

  • Integrating the emergency department with the local emergency medical system;
  • Assessing, diagnosing and treating patients quickly;
  • Treating low-risk patients with acute coronary syndrome and no assignable cause for the symptoms;
  • Having a functional design that promotes optimal patient care;
  • Ensuring Chest Pain Center personnel competency and training;
  • Maintaining organizational structure and commitment;
  • Seeking to improve processes and procedures; and
  • Supporting community outreach programs that educate the public to promptly seek medical care if they display symptoms of a heart attack.

If you happen to become one of the more than five million Americans that visit hospitals annually with chest pain, you can be assured that Good Samaritan will provide you with fast, innovative care.

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