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Carolinas Medical Center - First Accredited Chest Pain Center in North Carolina

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – January 7, 2004. The Society of Chest Pain Centers has granted the designation of Accredited Chest Pain Center to Carolinas Medical Center, making it the first in North Carolina and the 22nd in the nation to be accredited.

"It is a great honor and credit to the hard work and dedication of a team led by Dr. Lee Garvey of the CMC Department of Emergency Medicine that our center has been granted this designation," said Suzanne Freeman, president of Carolinas Medical Center. "The Chest Pain Center at CMC was responsible for saving a life on the very first day it opened, and thousands of patients have benefited from having this expertise and equipment available."

"Carolinas Medical Center is to be commended on its excellent and thorough approach to the low risk patients," said Scott Sorenson of the Society's Accreditation Review Team. "Additionally, the emergency department integration with the emergency medical system and educational offerings is superior."
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 is to significantly reduce the mortality rate of these patients by encouraging the adoption of the Chest Pain Center model by community hospitals.

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 Carolinas Medical Center 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. 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

About Carolinas Medical Center
Carolinas Medical Center is an Academic Medical Center Teaching Hospital and the flagship facility of Carolinas HealthCare System. Carolinas HealthCare System is a not-for-profit, self-supporting public organization. Carolinas HealthCare offers a wide variety of health and human services to residents of
both North and South Carolina. For more information, visit http://www.carolinashealthcare.org.

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 on the Carolinas Medical Center, contact Scott White, Public Information at 704-355-3141 or Scott.White@carolinashealthcare.org.

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