$2 Million Gift to Support Care Transformation at Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute

Gift to Further Advance Center for Cardiovascular Care Transformation

CHARLOTTE, N.C., December 20, 2021 – Atrium Health Foundation has received a $2 million gift from the California-based William, Jeff and Jennifer Gross Family Foundation to help further advance care at Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute.

This is the second gift from the William, Jeff and Jennifer Gross Family Foundation to support the Center for Cardiovascular Care Transformation within Atrium Health’s Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute. In recognition of the Gross family’s ongoing support, the center will be named after the William, Jeff and Jennifer Gross Family Foundation. Housed in the new Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute at Kenilworth Medical Plaza, the Center serves as the catalyst for innovation in education, research, and clinical care pathways necessary to support foundational change in the delivery of cardiovascular care.

Over the last two years, the Center has helped establish a virtual Hypertension Bootcamp, leveraging in-home monitoring and a multidisciplinary team to tackle one of healthcare’s greatest challenges. This foundational step paves the way for operating at scale with novel, patient-centered models of care for this and other cardiovascular diseases. In addition, funding from the Gross family gift has helped build an advanced analytics team and transformed anticoagulation treatment for patients with cardiovascular disease, reducing by 65 percent the number of office visits solely for anticoagulation management.

“We are thrilled with the Center’s progress over the last two years and to learn of the regional impact,” said Jeff Gross, whose mother-in-law, Georganna Moore, was treated at Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute. “We remain forever grateful to the Institute and Bill Downey, MD, Vice Chair of Quality and Care Transformation, for their expert and compassionate care.”

With the collective $4 million in philanthropic support, the Center for Cardiovascular Care Transformation will continue to implement best practices into everyday clinical care and help close gaps in care within underserved communities.

“Too often, innovations in healthcare leave behind those who can least afford it,” said Dr. Downey. “In hypertension specifically, disparities are significant, with higher prevalence and lower rates of control among racial and ethnic minorities. With support from the Gross family, we will work to overcome cultural barriers to success and develop and implement novel approaches that will not only benefit patients here in our region, but also those in other health systems across the country.”

 

About Atrium Health Foundation

Founded in 1959, Atrium Health Foundation is one of the largest charitable foundations in Charlotte. As the point of contact for all contributions benefiting Atrium Health in the Charlotte region, the Foundation inspires transformational giving to improve health, elevate hope, and advance healing – for ALL. Through its current Giving Hope Campaign, Atrium Health Foundation is supporting Atrium Health’s efforts to create the learning health system of the future by building healthy communities, outstanding education programs, preeminent research, and exemplary facilities.

About Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute

With more than 100 physicians and 20 care locations, Atrium Health’s Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute is the region’s most comprehensive and experienced cardiovascular institute and has been providing innovative life-saving heart care for more than 50 years. Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute offers comprehensive care from preventative screenings to vascular surgery and medicine to minimally invasive cardiothoracic surgeries. It also houses the region’s only heart transplantation program and offers complex pediatric cardiothoracic surgeries with quality outcomes that rank among the best in the nation. Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute is uniquely positioned as a leader in the future of cardiovascular medicine across the Southeast and the nation.

About Atrium Health

Atrium Health is a nationally recognized leader in shaping health outcomes through innovative research, education and compassionate patient care. Based in Charlotte, North Carolina, Atrium Health is an integrated, nonprofit health system with more than 70,000 teammates serving patients at 40 hospitals and more than 1,400 care locations. It provides care under the Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist name in the Winston-Salem, North Carolina, region, as well as Atrium Health Navicent and Atrium Health Floyd in Georgia and Alabama. Atrium Health is renowned for its top-ranked pediatric, cancer and heart care, as well as organ transplants, burn treatments and specialized musculoskeletal programs. A recognized leader in experiential medical education and groundbreaking research, Wake Forest University School of Medicine is the academic core of the enterprise, including Wake Forest Innovations, which is advancing new medical technologies and biomedical discoveries. Atrium Health is also a leading-edge innovator in virtual care and mobile medicine, providing care close to home and in the home. Ranked nationally among U.S. News & World Report’s Best Hospitals in eight pediatric specialties and for rehabilitation, Atrium Health has also received the American Hospital Association’s Quest for Quality Prize and its 2021 Carolyn Boone Lewis Equity of Care Award, as well as the 2020 Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Health Equity Award for its efforts to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in care. With a commitment to every community it serves, Atrium Health seeks to improve health, elevate hope and advance healing – for all, providing more than $2 billion per year in free and uncompensated care and other community benefits.

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