By Jeff Raymond
The Oklahoman (Oklahoma City, OK)
Copyright 2007 The Oklahoman, All Rights Reserved
OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. — Imagine having a heart attack and bypassing the emergency room.
At Integris Baptist Medical Center, it’s becoming a possibility.
The hospital last summer began using a $50,000 telephone system that summons on-call personnel for an incoming heart patient and can send electrocardiograms from paramedics en route to doctors, whether they’re at home or at the hospital.
The goal is to have a cardiac catheterization team ready when a person comes to the hospital, reducing the “door-to-balloon time” - the time it takes a person to be prepared for life-saving procedures such as inflating a tiny arterial balloon to clear blocked blood vessels.
Nationally, only 35 percent of patients are treated within the recommended 90-minute window.
“Our door-to-balloon time is just dropping like a stone,” said Dr. Charles Bethea, chief medical officer of Integris Heart Hospital, which is located inside Baptist. He would like to see it be an hour or less.
Bethea said the new system saves 20 to 30 minutes.
Part of the delay is in summoning the on-call personnel.
“It’s pretty hard to get 90 minutes done after hours,” he said.
The next area to shave minutes, he said, is in treating the 60 percent of people who drive themselves to the hospital when they think they’re having a heart attack.
Call an ambulance instead, he stressed. Patients who come in this way are surprised at the lack of wait.