Tyler Memorial Hospital Achieves New Status as Accredited Chest Pain Center
3/10/2015
TUNKHANNOCK, Pa. (March 11, 2015) – Commonwealth Health Tyler Memorial Hospital has earned Chest Pain Center Accreditation from the Society of Cardiovascular Patient Care (SCPC),
an international not-for-profit organization. The SCPC’s focus is to transform cardiovascular care by assisting facilities in their effort to create communities of excellence that bring together quality, cost and patient satisfaction.
To become an Accredited Chest Pain Center, Tyler Memorial engaged in rigorous evaluation by SCPC for its ability to assess, diagnose, and treat patients who may be experiencing a heart attack. To the community served by Tyler, this means that processes are in place that meet strict criteria aimed at:
- Reducing the time from onset of symptoms to diagnosis and treatment
- Treating patients more quickly during the critical window of time when the integrity of the heart muscle can be preserved
- Monitoring patients when it is not certain that they are having a heart attack to ensure that they are not sent home too quickly or needlessly admitted to the hospital
Heart attacks are the leading cause of death in the United States, with 600,000 people dying annually of heart disease. More than 5 million Americans visit hospitals each year with chest pain. SCPC’s goal 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.
“People tend to wait when they think they might be having a heart attack, and that’s a mistake,” Diane Ljungquist, CEO of Tyler Memorial, said. “The average patient arrives in the emergency department more than two hours after the onset of symptoms, but what they don’t realize is that the sooner a heart attack is treated, the less damage to the heart and the better the outcome for the patient.”
