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Press Release
Mother Frances Hospital is 8th in the Nation to Receive Chest Pain Center Accreditation
TYLER, TX – NOVEMBER 17, 2003. The Society of Chest Pain Centers and Providers has granted the designation of Accredited Chest Pain Center to Mother Frances Hospital, making it the 8th in the nation to receive accreditation.
Heart attacks are the leading cause of death in the United States, with 600,000 dying annually of heart disease. More than five million Americans visit hospitals each year with chest pain. The goal of the Society of Chest Pain Centers and Providers is to significantly reduce the mortality rate of these patients by teaching the public to recognize and react to the early symptoms of a possible heart attack, reduce the time that it takes to receive treatment, and increase the accuracy and effectiveness of treatment.
The Chest Pain Center’s protocol-driven and systematic approach to patient management allows physicians to reduce time to treatment during the critical early stages of a heart attack, when treatments are most effective, and to better monitor patients when it is not clear whether they are having a coronary event. Such observation helps ensure that a patient is neither sent home too early nor needlessly admitted.
With the rise of Chest Pain Centers came the need to establish standards designed to improve the consistency and quality of care provided to patients. The Society’s accreditation process insures centers meet or exceed quality-of-care measures in acute cardiac medicine.
The Chest Pain Center at Mother Frances Hospital has demonstrated its expertise and commitment to quality patient care by meeting or exceeding a wide set of stringent criteria and completing on-site evaluations by a review team from the Society of Chest Pain Centers and Providers. Key areas in which a Chest Pain Center must 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
“Mother Frances Hospital was the first in the region to open a dedicated Chest Pain Center in its Emergency Care Center,” said Michael J. Vintges, Vice President, Trinity Mother Frances Heart Institute. “Everyone at the Trinity Mother Frances Heart Institute is proud and excited to still be the leader in cardiac care by being the first in east Texas to receive national accreditation by the Society of Chest Pain Centers and Providers.”
The Society’s site evaluation team was most impressed with the commitment from each
member of the Chest Pain Center committee at Mother Frances. “Vital to the delivery of
quality cardiovascular care in the emergency department is team work. Mother Frances
demonstrated this effort through a shared commitment of the administrators, emergency
department and cardiovascular department,” said Robert Weisenburger Lipetz, Executive
Director of the Society of Chest Pain Centers and Providers.
About the Society of Chest Pain Centers
The Society of Chest Pain Centers (SCPC) is an international professional society focused on improving care for patients with acute coronary syndromes and related maladies. The Society is committed to improving the quality of patient care through protocol-based medicine and the adoption of process improvement science to healthcare. SCPC is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. For more information, visit www.scpcp.org.
For more information about the Trinity Mother Francis Heart Institute, its Accredited Chest Pain Center, or its community outreach programs, call Telecare Plus at 903-531-5678 or 800-535-9799, or visit www.tmfhs.org.
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