St. Francis Hospital earns renewed accreditation as Chest Pain Center

INDIANAPOLIS – St. Francis Hospital & Health Centers has been recognized by the Society of Chest Pain Centers (SCPC) for exceeding quality-of-care measures in acute cardiac medicine.

St. Francis recently received renewed accreditation as a Chest Pain Center and full Cycle II accreditation with PCI (percutaneous coronary intervention). This designates St. Francis as providing around-the-clock services from its heart catheterization labs to the community.

The hospital received its first accreditation in 2005, the first hospital in greater Indianapolis to receive that designation.

The accreditation is the result of on-site evaluations by a SCPC review team, which measures how well physicians perform in reducing time to treatment during the critical early stages of a heart attack and to better monitor patients when it’s not clear whether they are having a coronary event.

Such observations helps ensure that patients are neither sent home too early nor needlessly admitted.

Key areas in which the St. Francis demonstrated expertise:

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
-- Continually seeking to improve processes and procedures
-- Ensuring Chest Pain Center personnel competency and training
-- Maintaining organizational structure and commitment
-- Having a functional design that promotes optimal patient care
-- Supporting community outreach programs that educate the public to promptly seek medical care if they display symptoms of a possible heart attack

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 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.

Playing a key role earning St. Francis the accreditation is the development of its Emergency Heart Attack Response Team, a first-of-its-kind approach which has dramatically reduced the time patients receive lifesaving care at the St. Francis Heart Center after arriving at the emergency department with chest pain.

The EHART protocol – which has garnered much attention from the international medical community – has proven how hospitals can improve their care of heart attack patients and generate savings in health-care costs.

To learn more about EHART, go to www.heartattackcare.net. More information about the Society of Chest Centers can be found at www.scpcp.org.