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Southeast Missouri Hospital obtained Cycle I Accreditation in 2006. The Hospital is the 18th accredited Chest Pain Center in Missouri and the 315th in the nation.
Also, hospital recently (March 2010) received full Cycle III accreditation with PCI (percutaneous coronary intervention) by the Society of Chest Pain Centers. This procedure is commonly known as angioplasty to treat blocked arteries of the heart.
Chest pain center is not just a room in the emergency department or special treatment room. Southeast Missouri Hospital’s Chest Pain Center encompasses the entire hospital. It is a process that starts from the time a patient activates Emergency Medical Services (EMS), until that patient is discharged from the hospital. |
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Southeast Missouri Hospital is one of 228 unique hospitals in the United States recognized by the American Heart Association’s Get With The GuidelinesSM (GWTG) program. Southeast received the Gold Performance Award for coronary artery disease care.
Southeast Emergency Services Medical Director Michael Kolda, M.D., said, “There always is a very real sense of urgency in caring for patients with chest pain. We must treat them quickly, using the demonstrated best practices. Through accreditation, the Society of Chest Pain Centers provides us with road maps to achieve those high standards of care.”
Director of Patient Care Myrna Ward, BSN, RN, added that the objective of Chest Pain Centers in community hospitals is to focus on early recognition and treatment.
“When a patient is seen early, heart damage can be prevented, vessels can be opened and ischemia (inadequate blood supply to the heart) prevented.”
Heart attacks are the leading cause of adult deaths in the U.S., with 600,000 people dying annually.
More than five million Americans visit hospitals each year with chest pain.
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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 it takes to receive treatment and increase the accuracy and effectiveness of treatment.
Dr. Kolda explained that a Chest Pain Center’s protocol-driven and systematic approach to patient management allows physicians to reduce time to treatment during the 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 Chest Pain Centers came the need to establish standards designed to improve the consistency and quality of care provided to patients. The Society’s accreditation process insures centers meet or exceed quality-of-care measures in acute cardiac medicine.
The Chest Pain Center at Southeast 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.
- Effectively treating patients with low risk for acute coronary syndrome and no assignable cause for their symptoms.
- Continually seeking to improve processes and procedures.
- Ensuring Chest Pain Center personnel competency and training.
- Maintaining organizational structure and commitment.
- Having a functional design that promotes optimal patient care.
- Supporting community outreach programs that educate the public to promptly seek medical care if they display symptoms of a possible heart attack.
Established in 1998 and headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, the Society of Chest Pain Centers is a patient centric non-profit international professional organization focused upon improving care for patients with acute coronary syndromes and other related maladies.
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