Ascension Saint Thomas Rutherford Hospital in Murfreesboro, Tenn., has earned approval to perform open heart surgeries, the Daily News Journal reports.
State health officials granted approval for the hospital to perform the new service June 23.
In the first year of service, the hospital expects to perform 150 adult open-heart surgeries, though it's not clear how soon the hospital would begin performing the procedure.
"That would potentially be increasing to about 250 cases in year three," said Gordon Ferguson, the hospital's president and CEO. "We felt that the time was appropriate for us to launch this service, primarily to avoid a lot of the commute to Nashville for this type of care," he told the news outlet.
The hospital plans to recruit two heart surgeons to lead the team, as well as nurses and other medical professionals.
Two operating rooms — one for emergency surgeries and one for scheduled surgeries — will be dedicated to the hospital's new open heart surgery program. More complicated surgeries, such as heart transplants, will still be performed in Nashville, officials told the news outlet.
The new service is offered in partnership with Saint Thomas Heart in Nashville.