Putting heart health first

Collaborative effort launches regional Heart 1 program

It may seem like a small step, but a single phone call can make a big difference.

Starting in August, Cascade Healthcare Community launched a one-call system that is designed to get heart attack patients care at a faster pace. When a heart attack patient is identified by emergency medical personnel, one call is made to alert the interventional cardiologist and the rest of the cardiac catheterization team.

In the above photo Eden Bonito, a registered nurse, listens to the heartbeat of Charlie Hoover, a patient in the St. Charles
Bend emergency department.

“I think of it like the Staples easy button,” said Dr. Michael Widmer, a cardiologist at The Heart Center. “Hit the easy button and everything just goes.”

Nationwide, one-call systems have been shown to reduce the amount of time between when a patient arrives at a hospital with chest pains, to the time the artery is opened by as much as 15 minutes. And the sooner oxygenated blood is restored to the heart, the less long-term damage the muscle sustains.

“The better your heart functions after a heart attack, the better you do long term,” Widmer said. “There is less risk of heart failure, less risk of arrhythmia. People with better heart function have a better quality of life.”

The one-call system is only one piece of a larger initiative Cascade Healthcare Community and Heart Center Cardiology are working to implement. The Heart 1 program is a collaborative effort between area emergency medical service providers, rural hospitals and state agencies to improve care for all chest pain patients and is part of the American College of Cardiology’s Door to Balloon Time Initiative.

As part of Heart 1, EMS providers and hospitals in Central and Eastern Oregon have worked with St. Charles Bend to improve processes for identifying heart attack patients quickly and getting them the care they need. Widmer said the Heart 1 committee has developed protocols incorporating evidence-based guidelines for treatment of chest pain patients that categorize them in one of four stages depending on test results, symptoms and medical history.

A stage one patient is in the midst of an acute heart attack and will receive immediate treatment, while a stage four patient is less likely to be suffering a heart attack and will need further evaluation. On average, Heart Center cardiologists perform 400 cardiac interventions a year at St. Charles Bend, said Al Diluzio, Director of Cardiovascular Services, and about 100 of those cases are the most severe stage one patients.

At this point, most of the components of Heart 1 address heart attack patients after they have made contact with medical providers. Widmer and Diluzio said a next step in the process is to educate the public to recognize signs of a heart attack and to adopt their own one-call system—to call 911 for help as quickly as possible.

“The sooner the patient calls,” Diluzio said, “the better for everybody.”