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Cholesterol
Heart Doctors Reduce Middle Management
Two cardiac physicians from the Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, PA, have piloted new strategies to treat patients experiencing heart attacks much faster. The result of their pilot was a 50% reduction in the time it takes to move a patient from a helicopter to a catheterization table. Specifically, the doctors reduced the treatment time from 91 minutes to 32 minutes. These findings are significant because the longer a patient waits for treatment following a heart attack, the more severe the heart damage.
Their strategy is to reduce or eliminate “middle management” in the heart attack treatment process. ER physicians diagnose an acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and call out the catheterization team. They have an interventional cardiologist on call 24/7, 365 days a year, so they can move the patient through the hospital faster. In many cases, Geisinger Medical Center receives the referred AMI patient at the cardiac catheterization lab.
In rural central Pennsylvania, like many rural areas across the nation, patients being treated for AMI with angioplasty often must be transferred. Geisinger's research shows that delays from the onset of heart attack symptoms to the time of treatment were not the result of transit time as commonly thought, even when patients were transferred long distances. The delays were due to time spent waiting for a team of physicians to be contacted and informed of the diagnosis and treatment recommendation.
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