File photo.

PREVIOUSLY:

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A couple of weeks ago, the Outpost ran a story by reporter Ryan Burns about the Heart Institute at Providence St. Joseph Hospital, and in particular about the future of cardiothoracic surgery after Dr. Joseph Arcidi, the only local surgeon who performs these surgeries, leaves the hospital, which employees had been told would happen by February.

In discussions with Providence’s public information team after this story was published, the Outpost sent the following question, a version of which we asked well before the original story was published:

Is Providence going to have an on-staff dedicated cardiothoracic surgeon available in Humboldt County 24/7 going forward, after Dr. Arcidi leaves? If not, how does the hospital plan to replace that resource?

A week after we emailed this question to Providence, the hospital sent a response to the story. Here it is:

Providence St. Joseph Hospital Eureka will continue to offer cardiac and vascular services 24/7/365 for our Humboldt County community. This includes PCI procedures to open blocked heart vessels that cause heart attacks, and other interventions to treat sudden or severe cardiac emergencies as we have done for many years. We are extremely fortunate to have a team of credentialed cardiovascular surgeons to serve patients at our hospitals and medical centers across Northern California. Providence assures our Humboldt community that we will continue to provide the safe, high quality, award-winning emergent heart care they need in alignment with national certification standards.

We were still unclear how this answered the specific question we had asked, which was about the future availability of cardiothoracic surgery in Eureka — not about PCI procedures, nor about surgery at other Northern California hospitals — so we asked again. The public information team told us that the statement above answered the question.