In a news release Friday, Piedmont Hospital in Buckhead announced it recently achieved accreditation as a Heart Failure and Chest Pain Center from the Society of Chest Pain Centers, a Dublin, Ohio-based nonprofit focusing on transforming cardiovascular care by assisting facilities in their effort to create communities of excellence that bring together quality, cost and patient satisfaction.

“Heart care has always been among our top priorities at Piedmont and this achievement demonstrates that,” Les Donahue, president and CEO of Piedmont Atlanta, said in a statement. “Our team has worked hard to make this dual accreditation happen and our patients can rest assured knowing we hold ourselves to a higher standard and are constantly looking for ways to improve the care we provide.”

To receive Heart Failure accreditation, Piedmont Atlanta engaged in rigorous reevaluation and refinement of its cardiac care processes in order to integrate the healthcare industry’s successful practices and newest paradigms into its processes for the care of heart failure patients, as published in the “Society of Chest Pain Centers Recommendations for the Evaluation and Management of the Observation Stay Acute Heart Failure Patient,” developed by the centers’ Acute Heart Failure Committee in 2008.

Recognizing that heart failure is a leading cause of death in the U.S., Piedmont Atlanta’s new Heart Failure accreditation status demonstrates a commitment to effectively managing the increasing numbers of heart failure patients presenting to emergency departments. With a goal of reducing inappropriate hospital admissions and re-admissions, Piedmont seeks to improve patients’ quality of life while avoiding the cost of unreimbursed expenses.

To become an accredited Chest Pain Center, Piedmont Atlanta was evaluated by the centers for its ability to assess, diagnose and treat patients who may be experiencing a heart attack. To the community served by Piedmont, this means that processes are in place that meet strict criteria aimed at:

o Reducing the time from onset of symptoms to diagnosis and treatment

o Treating patients more quickly during the critical window of time when the integrity of the heart muscle can be preserved

o Monitoring patients when it is not certain that they are having a heart attack to ensure that they are not sent home too quickly or needlessly admitted to the hospital

Information: visit www.piedmont.org.