Jan. 29, 2025

This paid piece is sponsored by Avera Health.

Avera’s Planet Heart screening is like the dashboard on your car.

“During the screening, your body’s check-engine light may appear,” said Mick Gibbs, CEO of Avera Heart Hospital. “Our new location is helping more people distinguish between what’s urgent and what’s not an immediate concern.”

Accessibility is all important in health care, and the Sioux Falls retail location for Avera’s Planet Heart screenings on West 69th Street has improved accessibility since it opened in the summer of 2024.

“We have always been known for amazing clinical services when someone needed heart or vascular care. We want to ensure that peace of mind is just as accessible to our communities,” Gibbs said.

“We now have same-week availability for most appointments; in the past, we were booking out months in advance.”

The retail location with front-door parking also makes Planet Heart more visible and accessible physically. “We have the convenience of a retail location in a partnership with Avera Home Medical Equipment in the space next to us,” Gibbs said.

When Planet Heart was located on the Avera Heart Hospital campus, it shared diagnostic CT equipment with other procedures. As a health care business executive, Gibbs was called to find solutions to meet the needs of the community. His team now has a dedicated CT machine exclusively for Planet Heart, opening up many more appointment times.

“If we can help people identify cardiovascular and thoracic risk before there’s a problem, that’s a huge win for the patient as well as their family,” Gibbs said.

Avera screens between 4,000 and 5,000 people a year across 26 Planet Heart locations in South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota and Nebraska. “This service gives you a comprehensive health-risk appraisal at a very reasonable price,” Gibbs said.

The cost of Planet Heart is not run through insurance; however, some Avera Health Plans insurance products cover Planet Heart as a free wellness benefit. People also can often use their flex dollars to cover this screening. Yet the $125 cost for heart, vascular and thoracic screenings is something most anyone can afford. In fact, Avera sells gift certificates. “It’s a wonderful way for someone to say to their loved one, ‘You’re my entire world, and I want you to be around for the future,’” Gibbs said. It’s also a perk employers can consider offering to employees and leaders who fit age guidelines.

Planet Heart follows American College of Cardiologists guidelines in recommending heart and vascular screenings for men beginning at age 40 and women beginning at age 45. Frequency depends on risk factors, but for most people, the recommendation is every five to 10 years.

The combined screening includes blood tests for glucose and cholesterol, blood pressure, CT calcium scoring, vascular ultrasounds and lung/abdominal screening. A high CT calcium score, which detects calcium deposits in coronary arteries, can assess risk for cardiovascular disease. There’s also opportunity to get a polygenic risk score for cardiovascular disease. An important aspect of the screening is discussion with the nurse about risk factors.

Planet Heart is designed to find cardiovascular disease risk, stroke risk, vascular aneurysm or peripheral arterial disease. Yet the screening has saved lives in other ways. “Incidentally, we have found potential spots of cancer as all our images are read by a board-certified radiologist,” Gibbs said.

If the Planet Heart screening does find something, there’s a natural referral path within North Central Heart and Avera Heart Hospital. “We also screen non-Avera patients and share the findings and referral recommendations with the primary care provider and patient,” he said.

While primary care is the most common follow-up for patients, after an abnormal Planet Heart finding, specialty referrals are ade to cardiologists, interventional/structural cardiologists, cardiovascular surgeons or vascular/endovascular surgeons. A patient may need further testing, medications or in some cases a cardiac catheterization lab intervention.

While not addressed as part of Planet Heart, irregular heart rhythms are diagnosed and treated by a North Central Heart team of electrophysiologists.

The proximity of the Avera Heart Hospital is a benefit for the Sioux Falls Planet Heart site. “We can schedule a cardiac appointment for that patient or arrange a same-day consultation if warranted. It would be very rare, but we can refer someone directly to the cardiologist if we were to find an urgent condition,” Gibbs said.

“There are plenty of examples where we caught a medical catastrophe before it happened.”

Most people walk away from a Planet Heart screening with peace of mind or a recommendation to modify lifestyle factors like diet and exercise.

“My father died at 55 of heart disease, but my grandfather still had a healthy heart at age 95,” Gibbs said. “My Planet Heart screening suggests that I don’t have coronary artery disease, so I have lower cardiac risk like my grandpa. Before I went through Planet Heart, I was uncertain and didn’t have reassurance. Now, I do.”

Learn more about heart and vascular care and Planet Heart screenings at Avera.