Capital Health Medical Center in Hopewell is the first hospital in the Mercer County region to receive full accreditation as a Chest Pain Center from the Society of Cardiovascular Patient Care.
With the accreditation of its Chest Pain Center, part of the hospital’s Heart and Vascular Institute, Capital Health has become part of an elite group of hospitals recognized for implementing protocols that meet stringent expectations for recognizing and responding to cardiac emergencies.
According to the society, accreditation as a Chest Pain Center recognizes that Capital Health has passed “rigorous testing and process improvement to become an elite facility with a staff that understands how to treat cardiovascular patients.”
The hospital demonstrated significantly higher percentages of patients meeting strict standards for door to EKG interpretation and door to troponin results since the chest pain center’s establishment.
The accredited 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 unclear whether or not they are having a coronary event. Such observation helps ensure that patients are neither sent home too early nor needlessly admitted.
Capital Health’s Chest Pain Center has demonstrated its expertise and commitment to quality patient care by meeting a wide set of stringent criteria and undergoing an onsite review by a team of SPCP’s accreditation review specialists.
Key areas in which an Accredited Chest Pain Center must demonstrate expertise include integrating the emergency department with the local emergency medical system; assessing, diagnosing, and treating patients quickly; and effectively treating patients with low risk for acute coronary syndrome and no assignable cause for their symptoms.
Accredited centers must also continually seek to improve processes and procedures; ensure the competence and training of chest pain center personnel and support community outreach programs that educate the public to promptly seek medical care if they display symptoms of a possible heart attack.
Capital Health received on Dec. 29; it is valid for three years.
More information is online at capitalchestpain.org.
