Over the course of the past year, Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital has been able to cut down their heart attack response time to significantly below the national average with the help of cardiology staff.
Henry Mayo’s cardiac program reduced their door-to-perfusion time, or the time in between a heart attack patient’s arrival at a hospital and the time an operation is performed to resume blood flow to 45 minutes, 15 minutes faster than the national standard, according to officials.
“Every patient coming into the hospital is not just any other patient,” said Dr. James Lee, medical director of Henry Mayo’s Roberta G. Veloz Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory (cath lab). “Because we recognize that, every single member of this team is dropping everything they’re doing at that moment. We’re not walking to the hospital, we’re running to this hospital.”
Henry Mayo’s cath lab is among the newest heart attack programs in the county, representatives said.
The program was made possible by a donation from local businesswoman Roberta G. Veloz around 10 years ago.
“Her success in business created a woman with a passion for perfection,” said Roger E. Siever, president and CEO of Henry Mayo. “Thank you very much Roberta.”
According to Lee, the minimum requirements for hospitals is a 90 minute door-to-profusion time, and a 60 minute time is the standard because a swift response is essential when someone has suffered a heart attack.
“When patients are having heart attacks, basically they are having a compromise of blood flow to the heart,” Lee said. “Every single minute that goes by has an implication on the survival not only immediate but long-term for that patient.”
One of the reasons Henry Mayo’s heart attack response has been quicker than the standard is because paramedics with the Los Angeles County Fire Department can send the hospital electrocardiography (EKG) results electronically while providing care to a heart attack patient.
An EKG is a diagnostic test that can indicate whether a patient has experienced an acute heart attack. Hospital staff are able to view the test and, if the heart attack is identified as serious, mobilize their response team before the patient arrives at the facility.
“Before the patient even gets here, we will activate our emergency cath lab 24-hour on-call team so that they will come in,” said Tamar Avakian, a nurse practitioner in cardiovascular services for Henry Mayo. “Sometimes they arrive even before the patient does.”
Ultimately, the drive shown by the Henry Mayo cath lab team is what allows for such rapid response times.
“How well someone does even one year from their heart attack is affected by this metric, so we are constantly analyzing our performance and constantly motivating each other to reach higher metrics,” Lee said. “We never really stop or relax, and keep trying to make the program better.”
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