Cardiac ALERT
During a heart attack, your heart is deprived of oxygen, tissue is lost, and muscle is dying. Every second counts to prevent significant damage and to save lives. Springfield Regional Cardiac Center, working with Clark and Champaign County EMS squad personnel, has started Cardiac ALERT, an emergency heart care program designed to speed up the time to diagnose a heart attack and get hospital care as soon as possible.
Cardiac ALERT’s advanced data transmission and communication procedures gives hospital physicians the health information needed to activate Springfield Regional's cardiac intervention team so they stand ready to perform the necessary intervention upon patient arrival.
In the ambulance, EMS personnel assess a patient's condition and relay that diagnosis to staff standing by at Springfield Regional. By implementing Cardiac ALERT, patients bypass the emergency room and are taken directly to the cardiac catheterization lab for immediate treatment.
The goal of Cardiac ALERT is to give patients this type of cardiac intervention or "door-to-balloon time" within 90 minutes. Springfield Regional Medical Center's door-to-balloon time is consistently much lower, with an average around 58 minutes.
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