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Northside Hospital’s chest pain center unit accreditated
Article published on Thursday, April 24, 2008 |
LEALMAN – The Society of Chest Pain Centers has granted the designation of Accreditated Chest Pain Center with PCI to Northside Hospital and Tampa Bay Heart Institute.
Northside received the full accreditation status from the Accreditation Review Committee in February 2008.
“Everyone at Northside Hospital and Tampa Bay Heart Institute is excited to realize this successful accreditation as a chest pain center,” said Paula Hramika, chest pain outcomes manager. “The high standards set by the society will benefit our patients who can be certain that our goal with our heart attack patients is to save lives, improve patient outcomes, and provide an overall strategy for cardiac care,”
Northside Hospital is the first in Pinellas County to receive the accreditation with PCI (Percutaneous Coronary Intervention). It is the second step in the accreditation process and means Northside has achieved excellence in interventional cardiology treatment.
Heart attacks are the leading cause of death in the United States, with 600,000 people dying annually of heart disease. More than 5 million Americans visit hospitals each year with chest pain. The goal of the Society of Chest Pain Centers is to significantly reduce the mortality rate of these patients by teaching the public to recognize and react to the early symptoms of a possible heart attack, reduce the time that it takes to receive treatment, and increase the accuracy and effectiveness of treatment.
The center’s approach to patient management allows physicians to reduce time to treatment during the critical early stages of a heart attack, when treatments are most effective, and to better monitor patients when it is not clear whether they are having a coronary event. Such observation helps ensure that a patient is neither sent home too early nor needlessly admitted.
With the rise of centers came the need to establish standards designed to improve the consistency and quality of care provided to patients. The society’s accreditation process ensures centers meet or exceed quality-of-care measures in acute cardiac medicine.
The Chest Pain Center at Largo Medical Center has demonstrated its expertise and commitment to quality patient care by meeting or exceeding a wide set of stringent criteria and completing on-site evaluations by a review team from the Society of Chest Pain Centers. Key areas in which a Chest Pain Center must demonstrate expertise include integrating the emergency department with the local emergency medical system, assessing, diagnosing, and treating patients quickly, and effectively treating patients with low risk for acute coronary syndrome and no assignable cause for their symptoms.
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Article published on Thursday, April 24, 2008
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