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Society of Chest Pain Centers and Providers Accredits First Chest Pain Center

CANTON, OHIO, June 30, 2003 – The Society of Chest Pain Centers and Providers has granted the designation of Accredited Chest Pain Center to Mercy Medical Center, making it the first hospital in the nation to be accredited.

The Society of Chest Pain Centers & Providers recently inaugurated an accreditation process to review Chest Pain Centers across the country to ensure all hospitals are meeting or exceeding quality of care measures in acute cardiac medicine.

To earn accreditation status, facilities have to meet or exceed a wide set of stringent criteria and complete on-site evaluations by a review team from the Society of Chest Pain Centers & Providers. Key areas in which the hospital had to 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
• Having a functional design that promotes optimal patient care
• Insuring Chest Pain Center personnel competency and training
• Maintaining organizational structure and commitment
• Continually seeking to improve processes and procedures
• Supporting community outreach programs that educate the public to promptly seek medical care if they display symptoms of a possible heart attack

“It’s notable that Mercy Medical Center is the first ever accredited Chest Pain Center,” said Robert Weisenburger Lipetz, Executive Director of the Society of Chest Pain Centers & Providers. “But what is truly impressive, is that they achieved full accreditation in their first review.” Eleven other hospitals have gone through reviews, and will receive provisional accreditation.

“This demonstrates a history of devotion to quality acute cardiac care that can only have occurred through well established commitments from the physicians, nurses, and administration. Achieving full accreditation in the first round shows what can be achieved when all constituents of the Chest Pain Center collaborate in a well defined mission to better patient care,” Weisenburger Lipetz said.

“This tremendous news validates all of the hard work that so many physicians and staff here at Mercy have put into the development of the Emergency Chest Pain Center since its opening in early 1998,” said Thomas E. Cecconi, President and CEO, Mercy Medical Center.

"The recognition is gratifying because it reflects the tremendous commitment of our staff to providing superior, patient-focused cardiac care," said Harvard-trained interventional cardiologist Ahmed El Ghamry Sabe, M.D., director of Mercy's cardiovascular center.

Until now, formal accreditation has not been available. The designation of “Chest Pain Center” was used by facilities, who in good faith, felt that they met the basic requirements of a Chest Pain Center as published by the 1994 Consensus Panel Report in the American Journal of Cardiology. Today, facilities seeking to provide high quality patient care are encouraged to apply for accreditation from the Society.

“Simply stated, a sign and a marketing plan are not good enough. A facility needs to show ongoing effort and intent to improve to earn the designation of Accredited Chest Pain Center,” said Weisenburger Lipetz. “But unlike the fear driven compliance certifications that most facilities have experienced, the Society’s accreditation review is designed as a collegial process improvement initiative that provides reviewed facilities with a clear road map to improve quality of care. It highlights needed resources to ease clinicians’ budget requests, creates cost controls and assists reimbursement for managers, and most importantly, improves patient care.”

The Rise of Chest Pain Centers in the United States
Heart attacks are the leading cause of death in the United States. Each year, more than five million Americans will enter the hospital with chest pain. Of those, 1.25 million will present cardiac distress symptoms and 600,000 will die of heart disease. The concept of Chest Pain Centers in community hospitals was presented in the late 1980s as a strategy to significantly reduce heart attack deaths. It is estimated that there are now as many as 1,500 Chest Pain Centers in the United States. That number continues to grow as the value of such a center is proved in lives saved.

One of the goals of a Chest Pain Center is to significantly reduce the time it takes for a patient experiencing symptoms of a possible heart attack to see a physician, thus reducing the time to treatment during the critical early stages, when treatments are most effective. Also, by providing a specialized observation setting, physicians are better able to monitor patients when it is not clear whether they are having a coronary event. Such observation helps to ensure that a patient is not sent home too early or needlessly occupies CCU beds.

The rise of Chest Pain Centers has also led to very effective community education on the risks of heart disease. Part of a Chest Pain Center’s mission is to educate the public about the importance of seeking help early upon feeling symptoms of a possible heart attack. Most heart attacks present identifiable symptoms prior to serious damage to the heart. However, patients often do not feel that their symptoms are significant enough to seek professional help. In waiting, patients unfortunately put themselves at a much greater risk of injury or death.

The Society of Chest Pain Centers and Providers is a patient centric professional society with a focus on ischemic heart disease. The Society promotes evidence-based medicine, often delivered through a Chest Pain Center model to address the diagnosis and treatment of acute coronary syndromes. As a bridge organization, the Society brings together diverse medical specialties, such as emergency medicine and cardiology, clinicians, administrators, and other healthcare professionals.

The Society of Chest Pain Centers and Providers emphasizes its educational mission to promote community outreach to the lay public for early recognition of symptoms of acute coronary syndromes, but also to clinicians and hospital administrators, to help organizations manage the early treatment of acute coronary disease in a manner that optimizes success. In addition to these educational missions, the Society provides expert opinion to legislative work with various governing bodies and accredits Chest Pain Centers. More information can be found at www.scpcp.org.

Mercy Medical Center, along with the Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine Health System and University Hospitals Health System, operate a 476-bed hospital which serves Stark, Carroll, Wayne, Holmes and Tuscarawas Counties and parts of Southeastern Ohio. It has 550 physicians on its Medical Staff and employs 2,600 people. Mercy operates four outpatient health centers in North Canton, Carrollton, Jackson Township, and Louisville.

A faith-based, Catholic hospital, Mercy Medical Center upholds the mission and philosophy of the Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine and continues to be responsive to the needs of the community, including the provision of care to all, regardless of their ability to pay. For more information, see www.cantonmercy.com.

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