Building a clinical cardiothoracic surgical program: A multi-institutionalmodel

Building a multi-institutional cardiothoracic surgical program has the same guiding principles and values as a traditional single institutional progra m: ensuring high-quality patient care, training and fostering residents, re cruiting and retaining quality faculty, and contributing to basic and clini cal research. With a well-designed infrastructure and support system, this more complicated type of organization may permit academic cardiothoracic su rgical programs to compete effectively and grow in a constantly changing ec onomic and political environment.