VHAC in the News
The article below originally appeared in the Daily News-Record (Harrisonburg, VA) and is reprinted by kind permission of the publisher.
At The Heart Of The Matter - Heart Attack Coalition Meets At County Hospital
Daily News-Record (Harrisonburg, VA) - Monday, December 12, 2011 Author: DOUG MANNERS, Daily News-RecordHARRISONBURG - Ken Moulden credits missing keys with saving his life two years ago.
As he walked back into his Winchester trucking company's office to find them, Moulden suddenly felt weak and dizzy.
A coworker dialed 911 before Moulden even reached a chair. Frederick County Fire & Rescue personnel arrived minutes later and an electrocardiogram confirmed a third-degree heart blockage.
Emergency medical technicians alerted Winchester Medical Center and treatment started as soon as Moulden, then 60, rolled into the hospital on a gurney. Within 13 minutes he was in a catheterization lab where a cardiologist inserted a stent to reopen the blocked artery.
"Some people use the word miracle," Moulden said of his survival. "To me, it was a whole bunch of well-trained, intelligent people doing their job correctly, quickly and efficiently."
Moulden, of Berryville, shared his story Friday with about 50 area hospital officials and EMS providers gathered at Rockingham Memorial Hospital for a northwest region meeting of the Virginia Heart Attack Coalition. The volunteer coalition includes paramedics, physicians, nurses and cardiologists from across the state.
Going From 'Good' To 'Great'
In recent years, hospitals have made big strides in treating heart attack patients, said Dr. David Burt, an emergency room physician at the University of Virginia Medical Center and one of the leaders at the meeting.
In 2006, the American College of Cardiology launched a "door-to-balloon" initiative that encouraged hospitals to reopen a heart attack patient's artery within 90 minutes of arrival at the emergency room.
Few hospitals could meet that goal at the time. By last year, though, the median time at hospitals nationwide had dropped to 64 minutes, according to a recently published study in the American Heart Association journal.
Contact Doug Manners at 574-6293 or dmanners@dnronline.com
Page: A3
Record Number: 10011538
Rob Longley
City Editor
Daily News-Record
Harrisonburg, Va. 22801
540-574-6281
At RMH, the average door-to-balloon time for a patient with a STEMI - short for segment elevation myocardial infarction, the deadliest type of heart attack - is 43 minutes, according to Dave Grembi, director of the hospital's Heart and Vascular Center. He said RMH performs 75 to 100 STEMI procedures annually. STEMIs require even faster treatment than other heart attacks, as all blood flow to the heart is cut off.
"We're sitting on good," Burt said of average treatment times today. "Now we need to shake up things to get to great."
Cooperation
Getting there will take increased awareness and cooperation across the spectrum, said John Dugan, director of Mission: Lifeline Virginia. The group is a branch of the American Heart Association's national initiative to improve care for the nearly 250,000 patients who suffer a STEMI each year.
Communication between EMS providers in the field, emergency room physicians and cardiac catheterization teams is critical to reducing treatment times, Dugan said.
EMS squads should be equipped with the right diagnostic tools, like EKGs, to help determine if a patient is having a heart attack. Hospitals must then have a protocol in place for receiving those patients and alerting cardiology staff.
"This whole system has to work," Burt said. "When it's tripped by an emergency ... things just have to happen perfectly in order for that patient to get [treated]. That's where the Virginia Heart Attack Coalition, or VHAC, comes in."
Another goal of VHAC's is to get area hospitals working together to improve STEMI care. The meeting Friday included medical staffers from all five northwest region hospitals that perform heart catheterizations - RMH, Winchester Medical Center, Augusta Health in Fishersville, and Martha Jefferson Hospital and U.Va. Medical Center, both in Charlottesville.
"Coopetition" is the term Dugan uses to describe the desired blend of cooperation and competition between area health networks.
"It's about patient care, not market share," Dugan said. "They all do compete, but we're coming together in one room to make the whole process better."
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