DANVILLE -- For the first time in several years, patients in Vermilion County with serious breathing problems who need both the help of a ventilator and care of a pulmonologist will be able to remain hospitalized at Provena United Samaritans Medical Center in Danville.

United Samaritans previously had to transfer patients on ventilators who required a pulmologist to other hospitals that had that specialty, hospital officials said.

Starting Tuesday, that will change when pulmonology and critical care specialist Dr. Ismail Bobat joins the hospital's medical staff.

Bobat isn't a stranger to the Danville area. He has had part-time practices in both Danville and Urbana and serves as medical director for the sleep centers at both United Samaritans and Provena Covenant Medical Center, Urbana.

Mike Brown, CEO of both Provena hospitals, said the Vermilion County community has been in need of a pulmonology and critical care specialist for several years and Bobat will fill a big void for the hospital in Danville.

"With a full-time pulmonologist/critical care expert on our medical staff, physicians will be able to keep more of their ventilator patients here at United Samaritans without having to transfer them out of town." Brown said in a written statement.

Bobat earned a medical degree from the Saba University School of Medicine in the Netherlands-Antilles and master's and bachelor's degrees from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He completed his internal medicine residency at Harbor Hospital, Maryland, with clinical rotations at Johns Hopkins University.

He is board certified in pulmonary disease, critical-care medicine, sleep medicine and internal medicine.

Bobat is accepting new patients at the Medical Office Building, 800 N. Logan Ave., Danville. He will still see patients at Provena Covenant one day a week, and Covenant's sleep lab will be unaffected by Bobat's move to Danville, according to Covenant spokeswoman Crystal Senesac.