St. Peter’s Hospital, a member of St. Peter’s Health Partners, has received full accreditation for atrial fibrillation with electrophysiology services (EPS) from the Society of Cardiovascular Patient Care (SCPC). St. Peter’s Hospital is the first hospital in New York state to achieve this accreditation for its atrial fibrillation and electrophysiology program.
Atrial fibrillation is the most common cardiac arrhythmia and has become recognized as a health concern that in some cases can lead to stroke and possible death. More than 5 million patients in the United States have atrial fibrillation and that number is rapidly increasing as our population ages.
St. Peter’s Hospital has demonstrated its expertise and commitment to quality patient care by meeting or exceeding an array of stringent criteria and undergoing a comprehensive onsite review by an accreditation review specialist from SCPC.
“We congratulate the atrial fibrillation team at St. Peter’s Hospital for receiving full accreditation from the Society of Cardiovascular Patient Care,” said Dorothy Urschel, MS, ACNP-C, MBA, NEA-BC, vice president of the Cardiac and Vascular service line at St. Peter’s Health Partners, and vice president of operations at Albany Memorial Hospital. “This accreditation recognizes the team’s hard work, commitment to best practices, and dedication to providing the most compassionate, highest quality care for our patients.”
Atrial fibrillation patients are known to use more health care services and have much higher health care costs than non-AFib patient populations. SCPC’s Atrial Fibrillation (AFib) Accreditation helps hospitals: evaluate and manage the AFib patient more precisely, improve patient outcomes, and educate patients and health care providers leading to more effective and efficient disease control.
Hospitals that receive SCPC’s AFib Accreditation status employ an evidence-based, protocol-driven and systematic approach to patient management. This allows clinicians to reduce time to treatment and to better risk stratify patients while also reducing length-of-stay in the emergency department and the hospital.
By achieving SCPC’s Atrial Fibrillation with EPS Accreditation status, St. Peter’s Hospital demonstrated expertise in the following areas:
- Governance – Improves performance by effectively aligning people and services.
- Community Outreach – Increases public awareness and community education initiatives; develops partnerships with primary and specialty health care providers, care facilities, local businesses, and employers; and provides consultation services and support groups.
- Pre-Acute Care – Integrates out-of-hospital interventions delivered by community health care providers and first responders.
- Early Stabilization – Addresses immediate concerns in triage and performs initial activities related to risk assessment and stabilization.
- Acute Care – Employs a multidisciplinary, patient-centric approach from observation (or admission) through discharge to ensure an appropriate length of stay and optimal patient outcome.
- Transitional Care – Prevents unnecessary re-admissions with established care coordination at discharge, including early follow-up care and patient/family education.
- Clinical Quality Measures – Measures performance and outcomes related to thromboembolic and bleeding risk assessment, cardioversion, readmission, follow-up, and others; trends performance over time; and uses the data to improve quality.
For more information about atrial fibrillation services at St. Peter’s Hospital, please visit: http://www.sphcs.org/body.cfm?id=1416
For more information on SCPC, please visit: www.scpc.org
