Carolinas HealthCare Expands Network of Chest Pain Centers
November 11, 2009
Carolinas HealthCare System (CHS) now has nine accredited chest pain centers in its regional hospital network. CHS is one of only a few hospital systems in the country to have this number of facilities working jointly to facilitate better and faster cardiac care.
The newly accredited facilities include Kings Mountain Hospital, Cleveland Regional Medical Center, CMC-Lincoln and CMC-NorthEast. Also, Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte was re-accredited. Other CHS hospitals with prior accreditations include CMC-Mercy, CMC-Pineville, CMC-Union and CMC-University. All of the designations are awarded by the Society of Chest Pain Centers (SCPC), a national accrediting organization that promotes best practices in emergency cardiac care.
“The newly accredited facilities validate our successes in emergency care and extend the high level of cardiac care services to several new areas outside metropolitan Charlotte,” said B. Hadley Wilson, MD. Wilson is Chief of Cardiology and Vice President of the Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute. “The networked system,” he added, “is beneficial because CHS facilities are connected by a special communication system that facilitates patient-handling procedures. If necessary, patients can be transferred quickly and efficiently between facilities.”
For the past six years, the SCPC has been working to establish national standards that improve the consistency and quality of care provided to patients with suspected heart problems. The goal is to reduce time-to-treatment during the critical early stages of a heart attack, when treatment is most effective. In addition, SCPC promotes improved monitoring for patients not suffering heart attacks, so they are not sent home too soon or needlessly admitted for care.
Wilson noted that medical experts recommend calling 911 and traveling to a hospital by ambulance, rather than being driven by a friend or relative and navigating normal triage procedures. The reason, he said, is that most EMS personnel are now trained to employ electrocardiograms, which can provide immediate confirmation of a suspected heart attack.
In such cases, EMS personnel can call ahead and make arrangements for immediate referral to a cath lab for appropriate treatment. First responders can also steer patients to the closest facility that is fully equipped to treat a heart attack 24/7, without the delays that accompany an additional patient transfer.
“This recognition validates the efforts we have made to enhance the level of care available at all CHS emergency treatment centers,” said Lee Garvey, MD, Medical Director of the CMC Chest Pain Evaluation Center. “Now, with nine accredited facilities in our network, we have taken heart care one step further. Our primary goal is to save lives, and the teams at these facilities are very attentive to employing procedures that are geared to save time.”
