St. Louis, Mo (PRWEB) July 03, 2012
The Washington University and Barnes-Jewish Hospital Heart and Vascular Center has been honored with the American Heart Associations (AHA) Mission: Lifeline Gold Award. The hospital received the award due to the institutions focus on providing quality care to heart attack patients. Barnes-Jewish was specifically recognized for their treatment of ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction (STEMI), the most deadly type of heart attack.
Barnes-Jewish Hospital was the only hospital in the St. Louis area to be recognized as a part of this award. As a national leader in heart attack outcomes, they have been recognized for heart attack survival rates above the U.S. national average.
According to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) from their Hospital Compare website at hospitalcompare.hhs.gov, Barnes-Jewish is the only hospital in Missouri that has maintained a better than U.S. heart attack mortality rate since 2004. Barnes-Jewish Hospital is the only hospital to sustain their MI mortality rate for this length of time.
To be eligible for the award, hospitals must demonstrate, for 24 consecutive months, that at least 85% of eligible STEMI patients were treated within specific time frames upon entering the hospital and discharged following the American Heart Associations recommended treatment guidelines. For patients visiting the Washington University and Barnes-Jewish Hospital Trauma Center, door to balloon times have been 90 minutes or less in 2012. The median door to balloon time is 64 minutes in the U.S.
Weve had one hundred percent in-time rate for patients receiving emergency angioplasty or thrombolytics since January 2011, says Nelda Martin, APRN, cardiology clinical nurse specialist at Barnes-Jewish. This is an achievement only ten percent of all hospitals in the nation have achieved and sustained.
The American Heart Association created the Mission: Lifeline Gold Award in an effort to save lives. Over 250,000 Americans experience the STEMI type heart attack and a significant portion of those patients do not receive prompt reperfusion therapy. Mission: Lifeline seeks to save lives by closing the gaps that separate STEMI patients from timely access to appropriate treatments. Hospitals that receive the award are focused on improving the system of care for these patients and at the same time improving care for all heart attack patients.