Orange Park Medical Center earns heart failure accreditation

ORANGE PARK – Orange Park Medical Center received full Heart Failure Accreditation status from the Society of Cardiovascular Patient Care on Jan. 25.

It becomes the only facility in Northeast Florida and South Georgia that has engaged in reevaluation and refinement of its cardiac care processes, integrating the healthcare industry’s best practices and newest paradigms into its processes for heart failure patients. It is the 12th facility in the state of Florida to receive this award.

"Heart failure is currently the only cardiac disease that continues to increase in both incidence and prevalence," said Kelly Lindsay, director of cardiovascular services. "More Medicare dollars are spent for diagnosis and treatment of heart failure than any other disease. We are pleased to have taken measures through Heart Failure Accreditation to do our part to improve the lives of our heart failure patients while keeping costs down as much as possible."

Heart failure is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the United States. Approximately five million patients in the U.S. have heart failure. In addition, heart failure patients are responsible for 12 to 15 million physician office visits per year and 6.5 million hospital days. SCPC’s goal is to help facilities manage the heart failure patient more efficiently and improve patient outcomes.

The accreditation process reviewed such aspects as emergency department integration with emergency medical services, emergency assessment of patients with symptoms of acute decompensated heart failure-diagnosis, risk stratification of the heart failure patient, treatment for patients presenting to the emergency department in heart failure, heart failure discharge criteria from the emergency department, observation stay or inpatient stay, heart failure patient education in the emergency department, observation and inpatient unit, personnel, competencies and training, process improvement, organizational structure and commitment and heart failure community outreach.