Representatives from St. Francis Hospital in Evanston have announced the accreditation of the hospital’s Chest Pain Center and the continuation of their pioneering history in heart care.
Fifty years ago, the hospital, located at 355 Ridge Ave., performed the North Shore’s first open-heart surgery on a pediatric patient. Today the cardiac center is home to Illinois’ first accredited chest-pain center. It is recognized nationally by the Society of Chest Pain Centers and Providers.
Dr. Shahriar Dadkhah, medical director of the Chest Pain Center, said the accreditation measures the hospital’s devotion to patients. By seeking accreditation from the Society, the hospital committed itself to providing efficient care that can be inspected by a recognized agency.
“You want it to be standardized so people can trust and know (the quality of care),” Dadkhah said.
This care is achieved by coordinating the cardiology department with the emergency room, he said. Patients experiencing chest pain forego normal emergency-room procedures in accredited systems and begin a protocol-driven process.
But Dr. Robert Bonow, a professor of cardiology at the Feinberg School of Medicine and the chief of the Division of Cardiology at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, said he doesn’t see the need for accreditation. Bonow, former president of the American Heart Association, said the goals of the Society’s accreditation are the goals of all hospitals.
“Who’s accrediting whom here?” he said. “I think it’s a marketing thing. It’s true that some hospitals do a better job than others. The important thing is that if someone is experiencing chest pain, you treat them quickly.”
But Society President Dr. Anthony Joseph said accreditation allows patients to know they receive renowned hospital care in smaller community hospitals.
“Heart attacks occur in the community,” Joseph said. “We need community hospitals to provide this high standard of care.”
St. Francis is in good company, Joseph said. New York hospitals affiliated with Columbia University and Cornell University have attained accreditation from the organization. Also accredited is Florida Hospital in Orlando, which is rated as U.S. News and World Report’s 36th best heart hospital in the nation.
The Society of Chest Pain Centers and Providers, based in Columbus, Ohio, accredited Mercy Medical Center in Canton, Ohio, as the first official Chest Pain Center in June 2003. Dadkhah said hospitals such as Mercy Medical Center and St. Francis are pioneers in a movement he hopes will grip the country.
Dadkhah said recognized chest-pain centers seek to provide efficient, accurate care to patients. Accordingly, the Evanston-based center seeks to save lives, money and time.
“Last year there were 600,000 unnecessary admissions for chest pain in the nation,” he said. “This cost $10 million.”
At the same time, he said, 30 percent of heart-attack victims never seek care because they are uninformed or mistaken about the time needed for care.
“There’s this old mentality that if you go to the hospital, you’re going to be there for two, three weeks,” he said.
The St. Francis chest-pain center promises a swift diagnosis so heart attack victims are cared for immediately.
“You as a patient don’t really know if you have had a heart attack,” Dadkhah said. “You just know that you had a chest pain.”
By providing a system of immediate care, the burden lies now with patients, who should be willing to get checked if they feel something is amiss, he said.
St. Francis will host the Society of Chest Pain Centers and Providers’ seventh congress on April 28 at the InterContinental Hotel in Chicago.
