For the doctors of the Iowa Heart Center, moving to the heart of the West Des Moines “Medical Mile” made a lot of sense. So did the idea of owning their own facility, rather than leasing.

In a move that combines strategy with greater efficiency, the Iowa Heart Center is negotiating to buy nine acres off University Avenue on which it will build a new 83,000-square-foot clinic. The land it plans to purchase is south of University Avenue at 59th Place.

Besides enabling the practice to consolidate several facilities into one, the move would put the group within about a quarter-mile of the sites where Iowa Health-Des Moines and Mercy Medical Center each plan to eventually build West Des Moines hospitals.

The new clinic will also serve as the headquarters for the 50-physician cardiovascular medicine practice, which expects to grow to 60 doctors by the end of this year.

“It’s an exciting time for cardiologists,” said James Palazzo, the Heart Center’s chief executive officer. “One of the reasons we’ve grown is that the technology has advanced significantly in the past few years, where we can do so much more than we could before.”

Despite many medical advances, cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death in the United States, killing nearly 1 million men and women each year and affecting 68 million Americans. In Iowa, more residents die annually from heart disease than from any other illness.

Scheduled to open July 1, 2005, the $15 million facility will be the Heart Center’s largest outpatient clinic and will allow it to consolidate spaces now leased in downtown Des Moines and Clive. The physician-owned practice plans to maintain its clinics at Iowa Lutheran Hospital, Iowa Methodist Medical Center and Mercy, though it will scale back its Mercy operations from 50,000 square feet to about 15,000 square feet.

“We’ll still have full-scale offices at Lutheran, Methodist and Mercy, and now an expanded presence in West Des Moines,” Palazzo said.

In addition to its clinics at the three hospitals, Iowa Heart Center also has clinics in Ames, Carroll and Fort Dodge, and regularly holds clinics in 28 communities throughout Central Iowa.

Iowa Heart Center is one of two major cardiovascular groups in Greater Des Moines, the other being Heart and Vascular Care of the Iowa Clinic.

The West Des Moines clinic will provide patients easier access, particularly those traveling from smaller communities, because they won’t have to negotiate downtown streets or parking ramp, Palazzo said.

“That’s one thing that patient satisfaction surveys have shown us, that patients tend to have a better experience in single-practice physicians offices,” he said. “That isn’t meant in any way as a negative comment on our hospital partners. It’s just a different experience.”

Patients who want to stay with the same physician they’ve been with for outpatient visits may have to choose between a new doctor or a new location if their doctor moves to the West Des Moines clinic, said Rob Schweers, the Heart Center’s public relations and marketing director. All of the inpatient staffing will remain the same, however.

In a recent survey, most patients indicated that traveling to West Des Moines would not be a problem, Schweers said.

“Obviously, we’ll do whatever the patient wants,” he said. “If they want to stay at the same location, we can arrange for them to have a different doctor.”

From the physicians’ standpoint, the ability to be close to where the hospitals may locate on the Medical Mile is an advantage.

“Our doctors have a strong preference, when they can, to be close to hospitals,” Schweers said.

“But frankly,” Palazzo said, “if there never are any hospitals in West Des Moines, it still meets our strategy. But if they do go out there, then we’re with them.”