After the harsh winter weather here forced one postponment from a schedule February, a crowd of team members from both the Tennessee Heart clinic and the Clinton County Hospital joined other local residents as well as government and civic leaders for a ceremony in front of the local hospital officially recognizing the opening of the new heart clinic service here.

The Tennessee Heart clinic facilities are located inside the Clinton County Hospital and with a regular schedule of providing an on-site cardiologist in Albany every other week on Tuesday afternoon, local patients in the Clinton County area now have the convenience of seeing a Cookeville cardiologist in Albany instead of traveling to Cookeville for every visit.

For one Clinton County native and now a member of the clinic staff working out of Cookeville, the opening of the local clinic has a powerful meaning.

“I have a lot of people in Clinton County who I dearly love and I wanted to make sure they had this care available right here at home,” Mitch Stonecipher told the Clinton County News last Tuesday afternoon just minutes prior to the ribbon cutting ceremony. “We worked very, very hard to make this happen for Albany and Clinton County.”

Stonecipher, who grew up in the Duvall Valley Community of Clinton County, is now an RN and serves as the Director of Invasive Cardiology Services for the Cookeville Regional Medical Center, the hospital where Tennessee Heart is based.

The physicians at Tennessee Heart are on the medical staff at Cookeville Regional Medical Center and provide services through the Heart and Vascular Center at Cookeville Regional.

Currently staffed with ten cardiologists and one electrophysiologist (heart rhythm specialist), Tennessee Heart originally opened in Cookeville in 1994 and has a patient base consisting of people from counties throughout the Upper Cumberland and southern Kentucky.

The new outreach clinic at the Clinton County Hospital is one of seven clinics currently being operated in the area surrounding Cookeville, Tennessee.