Accreditation: Society of Chest Pain Center's Philosophy
The Society has an organizational mission dedicated to the improvement of the clinical processes for the early assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of acute coronary syndromes (ACS) within facilities serving our communities. The Society is truly interdisciplinary with members from medicine, nursing, hospital administration, the emergency medical system, aviation safety, architecture, business, quality improvement professionals, government, and law.
Accreditation serves as a tool to bring together diverse medical specialties, such as EMS, emergency medicine, and cardiology; clinicians and administrators; doctors and nurses; lawyers and doctors; architects and quality improvement professionals; and other combinations.
The Society promotes the Chest Pain Center as an operational model. Accreditation provides facilities with a road map to identify process gaps and a way to begin the journey of developing a plan for improvement for patient improvement.
The Society's Accreditation programs were developed using principles that are widely known in many segments of American business. Many larger organizations have entire departments or divisions devoted to process improvement. Likewise, all patient care is a process and can be improved.
The patient care delivery system most amenable to process improvement is the hospital. Hospitals function as businesses, and therefore, feel the same pressures and derive the same success from using process improvement tools. Since Chest Pain Center Accreditation and Heart Failure Accreditation are process improvement experiences, participating facilities are left with much more than a framed certificate to hang on the wall. The Accreditation Manual is designed to serve as a road map. There are two important points on a map: your location and your destination. The content of the Accreditation Manual is derived from peer-reviewed literature, professional society guidelines (mainly the American College of Cardiology), and the body of clinical acumen of participating clinicians. The destination, (improved patient care) is known to the degree that medical science is correct.
How well is your facility doing in diagnosing and caring for patients with ACS? Using the Accreditation Tool, a gap analysis can be done.Closing the gaps begins by creating an operational model that will work at your facility and includes strategic planning, budgeting, clinical pathways, and education. This approach is radically different from other accreditation processes that set specifications and then measure compliance.