Cheyenne Regional Medical Center Receives American Heart Association’s Mission: Lifeline® Gold PLUS Award

July 6, 2016

Award demonstrates CRMC’s commitment to quality care for heart attack patients

Cheyenne, WY—Cheyenne Regional Medical Center has received the Mission: Lifeline® Gold PLUS Receiving Recognition Award for implementing prompt, evidence-based care for patients experiencing severe heart attacks.

Mission: Lifeline is an American Heart Association program that recognizes referring hospitals, receiving hospitals and emergency medical services agencies for their success in using Mission: Lifeline criteria to improve quality of care for heart attack patients. The program awards gold, silver and bronze levels of recognition. Eligible hospitals must meet the program’s measures at a prescribed level for a designated period to receive an award.

CRMC earned the gold plus recognition by meeting specific Mission: Lifeline criteria and standards of performance for the quick and appropriate treatment of patients having STEMI heart attacks, including opening blocked arteries. A STEMI, or ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction, is the most deadly type of heart attack and is caused by a complete blockage of blood flow to the heart.

“Cheyenne Regional Medical Center has the unique challenge of helping heart attack patients who may be arriving from 1 to 100 or more miles away. Over the past several years, we have worked with first responders and rural hospitals in our region to establish guidelines and protocols that ensure heart attack patients are receiving the best and most appropriate heart attack treatments,” said cardiologist Muhammad Khan, MD, medical director of cardiovascular care at CRMC. “These treatments are based on clinical guidelines established by the American Heart Association and are what have helped our cardiovascular team achieve the high level of quality care that we are being recognized for.”

Each year in the United States, approximately 250,000 people experience a STEMI. To prevent death, it’s critical to immediately restore blood flow, either by surgically opening the blocked vessel or by giving clot-busting medication.

One of the criteria for earning the Mission: Lifeline gold award is for a hospital to have a “door-to-device” time of 90 minutes or less at least 85 percent of the time.

The American College of Cardiology recommends less than 90 minutes for “door-to-balloon” time, the time between a patient arriving at the emergency department and when a balloon device is inflated in the blocked vessel. CRMC has an average door-to-balloon time of about 55 minutes for treating STEMI patients.

The “plus” award is added for those receiving hospitals that have a “first door-to-device time” of 120 minutes or less at least 75 percent of the time. This means that the receiving hospital, such as CRMC, is able to open a blocked artery in severe heart attack patients within 120 minutes of those patients arriving at a referring hospital and then being transferred to CRMC for treatment.

“We commend Cheyenne Regional Medical Center for this achievement award, which reflects a significant institutional commitment to the highest quality of care for their heart attack patients,” said James G. Jollis, MD, chair of the Mission: Lifeline Advisory Working Group. “Achieving this award means the hospital has met specific reporting and achievement measures for the treatment of their patients who suffer heart attacks and we applaud them for their commitment to quality and timely care.”