There is a new facility in Philadelphia that is helping people born with congenital heart disease live longer, healthier lives.

The Philadelphia Adult Congenital Heart Center will take care of children who are born with heart disease and then follow them throughout their lives, reported WCAU-TV in Philadelphia.

In the past, people who were born with heart disease didn't live into adulthood, so there wasn't much treatment for them.

"You would never know I had the problems that I had. That's how wonderful a job that they're able to do with the people and everything that they have at this facility," said Jim Hendrix, who has congenital heart disease.

"There's an entire population of people out there who need additional care, and they need care with specialists in not only pediatrics, but also the issues of adults," said Dr. Thomas Spray, of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

The Philadelphia Adult Congenital Heart Center is the brainchild of the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. It is designed to treat children born with heart disease and take care of them into old age.

Doctors say the center offers patients specialists who can treat rhythm problems, heart defects or any cardiac abnormality.

"When I was a child, I had to go to Baltimore because Johns Hopkins was one of the few places that really had the type of people to help deal with those types of situations back then," Hendrix said.

Hendrix said that after he became an adult, he very rarely got checkups for his disease because he didn't have a doctor in his area who could treat him. But that is now changed.

"Should I have any problems in the future, I know I can come here and get the type of care that I need in order to have the best quality of health going into old age," he said.

Hendrix just had his second open-heart surgery in May. His first was when he was 13 years old. It was the doctors at the Philadelphia Congenital Heart Center who discovered that Hendrix needed to have a valve repaired.

Hendrix credits those doctors with enabling him to keep up his active lifestyle, including mountain climbing, jumping out of planes and riding his motorcycle.