Scottsdale Healthcare Honored

The Southwest Alliance for Excellence, formerly the Arizona Quality Alliance, named Scottsdale Healthcare a 2013 Showcase in Excellence Award winner for the hospitals’ heart-attack care process, “Door to Balloon – 60 is the New 90.”

Lowering door-to-balloon times helps improve the effectiveness of lifesaving therapy for patients with heart attacks who seek care at hospitals that perform emergency angioplasty.

The American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association state that hospitals treating heart-attack patients with emergency angioplasty should reliably achieve a door-to-balloon time of 90 minutes or less. Accomplishing this level of performance, however, can be an organizational challenge. Scottsdale Healthcare was recognized for improving its performance above and beyond the national target for 100 percent of patients for the past 16 months.

"When treating myocardial infarction, every moment that can be saved is critical because it keeps a portion of the patient’s heart muscle from dying due to a lack of oxygen,” says cardiologist Alan Tenaglia, M.D. “As we always say, time is muscle.”

The award follows a recent site visit from Southwest Alliance for Excellence examiners who toured Scottsdale Healthcare hospitals to assess door-to-balloon care for heart-attack patients. The presentation will be Feb. 4 at the Chaparral Suites Resort in Scottsdale.