Medical Center Hospital receives Chest Pain Center accreditation

Medical Center Hospital in Odessa is the only hospital between El Paso and Dallas-Fort Worth accredited by the Society for Chest Pain Centers (SCPC).

MCH received full Cycle II accreditation with PCI from the Accreditation Review Committee on April 25. This prestigious accreditation means MCH can assess, diagnose and treat cardiac patients quickly and effectively.

"I am incredibly proud of our Chest Pain Center. They offer excellent service and have a dedicated clinical staff," stated Brenda Neckels, RN, BSN, director of The Center for Heart Disease. "The Chest Pain Center Accreditation was a project that they themselves pursued and achieved.

The CPC Accreditation speaks to the professionalism and dedication of the staff in the CPC, as well as the collegiality of the staff in The Center for Heart Disease. (Chest Pain Center, ED, ED physicians, Cardiology and the Cath Lab)." Neckels continued "It is the coordination of these departments and the relationships between these departments that allowed us to be successful not just in getting accredited but being accredited as a facility with Primary PCI (Percutaneous Coronary Intervention), which puts us in an elite group of top 100 hospitals - only 25 percent of accredited Chest Pain Centers are accredited with primary PCI."

Heart attacks are the leading cause of death in the United States, with 600,000 dying annually of heart disease.

More than five million Americans visit hospitals each year with chest pain.

The goal of the Society of Chest Pain Centers is to significantly reduce the mortality rate of these patients by teaching the public to recognize and react to the early symptoms of a possible heart attack, reduce the time that it takes to receive treatment, and increase the accuracy and effectiveness of treatment.

The Chest Pain Center's protocol driven and systematic approach to patient management allows physicians to reduce time to treatment during the critical early stages of a heart attack, when treatments are most effective and to better monitor patients when it is not clear whether they are having a coronary event.

Such observation helps ensure that a patient is neither sent home too early nor needlessly admitted.

The Chest Pain Center at Medical Center Hospital has demonstrated its expertise and commitment to quality patient care by meeting or exceeding a wide set of stringent criteria and completing on-site evaluations by a review team from the Society of Chest Pain Centers.

Key areas in which a Chest Pain Center must demonstrate expertise include: integrating the emergency department with the local emergency medical system; assessing, diagnosing, and treating patients quickly; effectively treating patients with low risk for acute coronary syndrome and no assignable cause for their symptoms; continually seeking to improve processes and procedures; ensuring chest pain center personnel competency and training; maintaining organizational structure and commitment; having a functional design that promotes optimal patient care; and supporting community outreach programs that educate the public to promptly seek medical care if they display symptoms of a possible heart attack.

The Society of Chest Pain Centers is a patient centric nonprofit international professional organization focused upon improving care for patients with acute coronary syndromes and other related maladies.

Established in 1998, the society is dedicated to patient advocacy and focusing on ischemic heart disease.

The society promotes protocol based medicine, often delivered through a Chest Pain Center model to address the diagnosis and treatment of acute coronary syndromes, heart failure, and to promote the adoption of process improvement science by healthcare providers.

To best fulfill this mission, the Society of Chest Pain Centers provides accreditation to facilities striving for optimum Chest Pain Center care. SCPC is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio.

For more information on the Society of Chest Pain Centers, visit www.scpcp.org or call Robert Lipetz, executive director, at 614-442-5950.