Dr. Mike Sultan married his wife, Becki, in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic. He is the new cardiologist who will travel to Blue Mountain Hospital.

A new face will be providing cardiology services at Blue Mountain Hospital.

Dr. Mike Sultan, an interventional cardiologist at St. Charles Hospital in Bend, will travel to the hospital in John Day to provide local consultations.

Sultan moved to Bend four months ago from Phoenix, Arizona, with his wife, Becki. Before that, he attended medical school in Chicago, then moved to Arizona seven years ago to complete his fellowship, residency and training. He graduated from his fellowship last summer.

“We’re totally new here, and we actually just got married about seven months ago,” Sultan said. “We are a COVID couple and got married in the midst of COVID.”

As an interventional cardiologist — which specializes in catheter-based treatment of heart diseases — Sultan spends about half his time seeing patients in clinics and the other half doing procedures in the cath lab.

He often covers cases of acute heart attacks that come from St. Charles or outlying hospitals.

“With an acute heart attack, there’s a need to mobilize a team and to have a response to do emergent procedures,” Sultan said.

The team of interventional cardiologists works 24/7 to cover these emergencies.

“That’s a big portion of our lives, which is doing emergent cases for people that have emergent heart attacks,” Sultan said. “That’s a very exciting and rewarding part of our days and nights.”

Sultan said the other part of the job is helping people before or after a heart attack. This includes preventative cardiology that identifies risk factors to lower the chances of having a cardiovascular event.

“As interventionalists, we do quite a bit of procedures, but we also do a bit of general cardiology as well,” Sultan said.

If a primary care provider at Blue Mountain Hospital has a patient who needs to see a cardiologist, they can schedule appointments during one of Sultan’s days in John Day. He can then give consultations and recommendations.

If further workup is needed that requires resources in Bend, Sultan can schedule it there.

“My hope is that I can be kind of that point person where other primary care doctors or ER doctors can be able to filter or focus the needs of cardiology, and then I’m able to provide that care up there,” Sultan said.

Sultan would like the community to know he is eager to travel to Grant County to see patients and provide as much of the care available in Bend to Blue Mountain Hospital.

“I’m a young cardiologist,” he said, “but I’m eager to be up there and see patients.”