The Heart Center's mission is to focus on providing the highest quality, family centered, most cost effective and comprehensive care to all patients, regardless of age, with congenital heart disease. In doing so, the Heart Center at Nationwide Children's Hospital is one of the leading congenital heart disease centers in the world for infants, children and adults.

And we are accomplishing that mission without losing site of an important fact: At the Heart Center, we treat patients and families, not customers. We provide expertise and diagnostic and therapeutic technology that is second to none. At the same time, we believe that the patient deserves an ongoing relationship that is built not only on technical competence, but also on communication and trust. The patient, the family and the referring physician are at the center of the circle, not off to the side. Thus, our motto: "Out in front. By your side."

In the pages that follow, we will provide information about all aspects of our Center. In each of the sections of the Center we will present data about our outcomes as they compare to the rest of the state, country or world. We will also display our complication rates, volumes, information about access to services and stories about individual patients and families who have used the Center.

Timothy Feltes, MD, FACC, Co-Director of the Heart Center, Chief of Pediatric Cardiology, Cardiac Intensivist, and Associate Professor of Pediatrics, The Ohio State University College of Medicine

Mark Galantowicz, MD, FACS, Co-Director of the Heart Center, Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery, and Associate Professor of Surgery, The Ohio State University College of Medicine