The Prairie Heart Institute and St. Francis Hospital have a long history of working together to provide local access to cardiovascular specialists through regularly scheduled cardiology clinics at St. Francis Hospital. “This new agreement is an evolution of that long history and we are excited about the possibilities to bring an even higher level of cardiovascular care to our city and region” said Daniel Perryman, CEO/President of St. Francis Hospital.
Though details are being finalized, some of the expected enhancements are:
• Implementation of a program and protocol to quickly identify emergency room patients who may be suffering from congestive heart failure. These patients are often diagnosed as suffering from a respiratory disorder rather than a heart condition which can then slow treatment for the real problem, heart failure.
• Programs to more rapidly and accurately identify heart attack patients and speed treatment to minimize damage to the heart muscle. The most commonly misdiagnosed disorder in American emergency rooms is heart attack. This is because the symptoms can mimic other problems such as gastrointestinal disorders. This new partnership will implement programs and testing to quickly identify the source of the symptoms and direct the patient to the treatment suited for their condition.
• Access to clinical trials that will provide opportunities for patients in the Litchfield area to have access to drugs and treatments available only through the Prairie Heart Institute of Illinois.
Some of the features of this partnership that currently exist are:
• An electronic medical record for patients seeing a Prairie cardiologist that insures immediate access to all information related to the patient’s treatment and condition regardless of whether the patient received that care in Litchfield or Springfield.
• No need to leave Litchfield for pre-procedure work-ups and post procedure follow-up.
• Specialized education for nurses and technicians.
The result of this unique commitment will be that regardless of where a patient lives, they will have available a higher level of heart and vascular care which will detect disease earlier, offer not previously available life-saving techniques and drugs and insure a return to a quality of life possible only with these programs said James P. Zito, CEO of the Prairie Heart Institutes of Illinois.
The benefits of networks are many. Standardization of quality assurance measures, sharing of successful patient safety strategies, the addition of clinical research, workforce development and internal benchmarking are some of the areas of focus made possible by this network.
The Prairie Heart Institutes of Illinois (PHII) is a partnership of community hospitals and the Prairie Heart Institute. The goal of this partnership is to create a network of community hospitals that will make available locally, the nationally recognized heart and vascular care previously only available at the “Prairie Heart Institute” in Springfield. Each community hospital that meets the “Prairie Standards of Care” will be branded as “Prairie Heart Institute, (hospital or city name)”.
Unlike other heart programs that make available specialists locally for the purpose of identifying patients then directing them to a larger out of town program, the goal of The Prairie Heart Institutes of Illinois is to insure as much care as possible is provided locally.
