St. Luke's Hospital - A better place to be

Opening heart blockages within 90 minutes

Once a heart attack begins, fast treatment is the key to a successful recovery. The more quickly a blocked artery is opened and blood flow to the heart is restored, the less permanent damage occurs to the heart muscle.

The national benchmark is called “door-to-balloon time.” Research shows that inserting a balloon catheter into the affected artery to open the artery with angioplasty or other intervention should occur within 90 minutes after a patient’s arrival to the hospital. This timetable saves lives and leads to better patient outcomes.

St. Luke’s tracks “door-to-balloon time” to ensure we are providing care as quickly as possible. The average “door-to-balloon time” at St. Luke’s is 63 minutes. St. Luke’s fastest reported time is 24 minutes.

The right care, at the right time

There are many steps involved in the care of each patient. One way to measure hospital quality is to look at the number of patients in which all of the steps were done for a patient with a specific condition, within a set amount of time. The results are grouped into a single score. The Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) monitors that score and calls it an Appropriate Care Measure (ACM). 
 
ACMs include four topic-specific scores: heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia and surgical care, as well as an overall ACM score.

St. Luke’s performs better than the national average and near the top ten percent of hospitals.

St. Luke’s achieves near zero infection rate

Urinary-tract infections (UTIs) are the most common type of healthcare-associated infection, accounting for more than 30 percent of healthcare-associated infections reported by acute care hospitals. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) virtually all healthcare-associated UTIs are caused by insertion of catheters into the bladder. These catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs) may be linked to other health issues, hospital costs and length of stay. The good news is that many CAUTIs may be prevented with infection prevention measures.

Efforts to reduce CAUTIs have been ongoing since 2007. St. Luke’s has developed and implemented more than a dozen action items to decrease CAUTIs including:

• Inserting catheters only when needed

• Following strict catheter care guidelines

• Removing catheters when no longer needed

Reduce adverse drug events involving insulin

Diabetic patients who use insulin are at risk of suffering adverse drug events (ADEs) if their insulin care is not carefully managed.

Low blood sugar episodes can be sudden, severe and may lead to other complications. St. Luke’s takes a team approach to care for these patients in an effort to reduce the risk of an ADE.

Some safeguards St. Luke’s put in place to prevent AEDs in insulin dependent diabetic patients:

• Developed a set of standardized doctor’s orders for all patients

• Created a diabetes management guidebook for healthcare providers

• Provided ongoing education for doctors and nurses through newsletters,presentations and online learning

• Established treatments for diabetic patients with low blood sugar prior to surgery and during the hospital stay

Preventing strokes

Doctors and nurses are proactive when it comes to preventing blood clots in a patient's legs during a hospital stay. A defined therapy is followed, which blocks the formation of new clots, prevents existing clots from getting bigger and reduces an individual’s risk of complications from blood clots. This therapy plan includes the use of medications and inflatable devices applied to the patients lower legs, which helps pump blood back to the patient’s heart.

Additionally, patients recovering from a stroke are at high risk for having a second stroke. Medications are an important part of medical care for stroke patients. Studies suggest that prescribing blood clot reducing medications when a patient is released from the hospital will likely reduce stroke deaths and complications as long as there are no medical reasons to avoid it.