Contact:
Jason Merrill
314-286-0302
[email protected]

ST. LOUIS - The Washington University and Barnes-Jewish Hospital Heart and Vascular Center is a 2011 recipient of the American Heart Association’s (AHA) Mission: Lifeline Silver Award. The award recognizes the success of Barnes-Jewish and their physician partners at Washington University School of Medicine in providing quality care to heart attack patients. Barnes-Jewish is the only St. Louis area hospital to receive this recognition.

The award specifically recognizes treatment of ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction (STEMI) - the deadliest type of heart attack.

Barnes-Jewish Hospital is a national leader in heart attack outcomes, consistently measured by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for having heart attack survival rates better than the U.S. national rate.

“We’ve had one hundred percent in-time rate for patients receiving emergency angioplasty or thrombolytics,” says Nelda Martin, APRN, cardiology clinical nurse specialist at Barnes-Jewish. “This is an achievement only ten percent of all hospitals in the nation have achieved and sustained.”

Based on data from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) from their “Hospital Compare” website at hospitalcompare.hhs.gov:

• Barnes-Jewish is one of 4 hospitals in Missouri to have better than US heart attack mortalty rate.
• Barnes-Jewish is the only Missouri hospital that has maintained a better than US heart attack mortality rate since 2004. No other Missouri hospital has sustained their MI mortality rate for this length of time.

In addition, in 2011 door to balloon times have been less than 90 minutes for 100% of patients. The median door to balloon time is 64 median minutes.

Barnes-Jewish was among a select group of hospitals the AHA recognized in the Mission: Lifeline program for at least 12 months of 85% or higher composite adherence to all STEMI receiving center performance achievement indicators and 75% or higher compliance on all STEMI receiving quality measures to improve the quality of care for STEMI patients.