DMC breaks ground on heart hospital

The Detroit Medical Center has broken ground on a $78 million dollar heart hospital.

It’s part of a broader expansion plan announced when Vanguard Health System purchased the DMC last year.

Theodore Schreiber is president of the Cardiovascular Institute, which will run the hospital. He says financing the facility would have been “inconceivable” without the DMC’s acquisition by for-profit Vanguard.

"Nationally as a whole, non-profit hospital institutions have tremendous difficulty obtaining capital, let alone the flagship institution in center city Detroit at the heart of the economic crisis," he said.

Schreiber says the hospital will be the only facility of its kind in Michigan, with diagnosis, prevention and treatment of heart disease.

It’s expected to be completed in early 2014.