Porter Regional Hospital recently received Chest Pain Center Accreditation from the Society of Chest Pain Centers (SCPC), an international not-for-profit organization focused on transforming cardiovascular care by assisting facilities in their efforts to bring together quality care, cost effectiveness and patient satisfaction.

To become an Accredited Chest Pain Center, Porter faced rigorous reevaluation and refinement of its cardiac care processes in order to integrate the healthcare industry’s successful and newest practices into its cardiac care.

Protocol-based medicine, developed by leading experts in cardiac care, to reduce the time from onset of symptoms to diagnosis and treatment are part of Porter’s overall cardiac care service. Porter’s state-of-the-art heart care encompasses the entire continuum of care for the Acute Coronary Syndrome (ACS) patient and includes such focal points as dispatch, Emergency Medical System, emergency department, cath lab, quality assurance plan, and community outreach program.

As an Accredited Chest Pain Center, Porter strives to ensure that patients who arrive at the hospital complaining of chest pain or other symptoms of a heart attack receive the treatment necessary during the critical window of time when the integrity of the heart muscle can be preserved. By becoming an Accredited Chest Pain Center, Porter has enhanced the quality of care for the ACS patient and has demonstrated its commitment to higher standards.

“We’ve been working on this for about a year-and-a-half,” said Clinical Nurse Educator Kari Evans, RN, BSN, CEN. “I was involved early on in educating the staff to recognize atypical symptoms of Acute Coronary Syndrome.” Evans added that chest pain is among the top symptoms in patients coming to the emergency department and reducing the time it takes to receive treatment and increasing the accuracy and effectiveness of the treatment takes coordination among many departments.

For Porter to receive SCPC accreditation as a Chest Pain Center, it provided documentation proving that systems were in place to expedite and improve heart attack patient’s treatment. “We are consistently getting patients from the ED to the Cath Lab for treatment in less than 90 minutes.” Evans said.

Coordinator of the Chest Pain Center, Dawn Nelson, CNS, PC-C and Cardiovascular Nurse Practitioner at Porter explained the 90-minute window by saying, “Called ‘door-to-balloon time’ or ‘D2B’ the American Heart Association notes that each 30-minute delay in restoring blood flow by means of angioplasty increases a patient’s one-year mortality by 7.5 percent.”

For Porter Regional Hospital’s physicians and patients, the designation as an Accredited Chest Pain Center means that achieving the goal of providing evidence-based practices in order to improve outcomes for patients.

Porter Health Care System has two hospital campuses and seven outpatient facilities serving Porter, Lake, LaPorte, Starke and Jasper counties. With more than 350 physicians representing 50 medical specialties, Porter Health Care System is a leader in technology, innovation and overall patient care.

Posted 9/13/2012