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Intermountain Medical News – For Immediate Release
Contact:Jess Gomez / [email protected] / 801-718-8495
Two Intermountain Hospitals Honored for Being Top 50 Centers With Nation’s Lowest Heart
Attack Readmission Rates
Two Intermountain Healthcare hospitals have made a national honor list for having some of the
nation’s lowest readmission rates for heart attack patients.
Becker’s Hospital Review’s newest list of “51 Hospitals with the Lowest Heart Attack Rates”
places Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute in its number seven spot, while Dixie
Regional Medical Center tied for number 42.
Becker’s Hospital Review is an industry journal for healthcare leaders in the United States.
The readmission rate for the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute in Murray is 14.3
percent, while Dixie Regional Medical Center in St. George has a 14.9 percent readmission rate.
Nationally, 16.8 percent of heart attack patients across the country are readmitted within 30
days of treatment.
They were the only Utah hospitals to make the list, which is based on the most recent complete
“Hospital Compare” performance data collected by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
Services from July 2012 to June 2015.
The Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute includes 50 heart specialists who work
closely with other care providers to ensure the highest-quality, evidence-based advanced
cardiovascular care, said Donald Lappé, MD, chair of the cardiovascular department and chief
of cardiology at the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute.
Ninety minutes is the magic number for the one-third of heart attack patients who suffer a
STEMI, also known as an ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction, which is a severe heart
attack that completely blocks the coronary artery, cutting off blood to the heart.
The optimal treatment — which also serves as the national standard for cardiovascular
professionals — requires that the blocked coronary artery be opened and blood flow
reestablished within 90 minutes of the patient’s arrival at the hospital.
It’s a tight timeline, because in those 90 minutes, a diagnose must be made, appropriate
medication administered, and the patient transferred to the cardiovascular cath laboratory.
There an interventional cardiologist locates the blockage using a heart catheter, inserts a
balloon to open the blocked vessel (a procedure called an angioplasty) and places a scaffold
called a stent to hold it open.
Intermountain Healthcare has created a hub-and-spoke process at four Wasatch Front hospitals
that allows patients who are diagnosed with STEMIs at LDS Hospital, Park City Hospital,
Riverton Hospital, and Alta View Hospital to be transferred to Intermountain Medical Center for
treatment, within that 90-minute window.
“Achieving low readmission rates reflects success in three areas: Opening the blocked artery
faster, ensuring the patients go home on the right medications, and educating patients about
what to expect.” Even a few minutes’ delay in getting blood to the heart, a process called
reperfusion, can greatly reduce survival,” said Kent Meredith, MD, an interventional
cardiologist at Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute. “By quickly re-establishing
perfusion, our patients are doing better, are surviving the heart attack, and are leaving the
hospital in better condition than they would be.”
“In the last five years, essentially 100 percent of patients receive that rapid care. For those
patients, we’ve had almost one-third of the mortality and readmission rates for STEMI heart
attacks compared to the national average,” added Dr. Lappé.
The readmission rate also reflects the quality of the discharge medications. Dr. Meredith said
it’s crucial that best-practice steps are followed like ensuring the patient goes home with the
right blood thinners, or patients may be readmitted in worse condition than before.
“Intermountain Healthcare’s evidence-based approach builds in safeguards that make it almost
impossible for patients to not have the right prescriptions when they go home,” he said.
Low readmission rates also help patients know what to expect and when they need to get help,
said Dr. Meredith.
“A lot of patients go home from a heart attack with a lot of questions and anxiety,” he said.
“They’re nervous; they just kind of dodged a bullet and are going home scared, so any little
thing can send them back to the emergency room. I think we’re doing a better job of educating
the patients when they’re discharged about what to expect after a heart attack, what’s normal
and not normal, when to call the doctor, and when to go to the hospital.”
Patients at the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute are also enrolled in cardiac
rehabilitation, where they learn about diet and nutrition, appropriate medication, and exercise,
among other things.