| December 18, 2008: Saint Thomas Hospital of Nashville, Tennessee has achieved the distinction of becoming the first accredited Heart Failure InstituteSM in Tennessee officials at The Healthcare Accreditation Colloquium® announced today. "This accreditation recognizes the broad based expertise of care that Saint Thomas Heart provides," said Tod Lambert, cardiac service line executive for Saint Thomas Health Services. The Healthcare Accreditation Colloquium brings quality and process improvement to the care of heart failure patients in the community and hospitals by using improvement-based continuous accreditation. The Colloquium offers an organized and systematic approach to heart failure that encompasses the entire continuum of care. The process is modeled after well-established process improvement methods used in industry. Saint Thomas Hospital exceeded all requirements for accreditation, which included an analysis of current practices, comprehensive report, in-depth interviews, and an on-site visit from surveyors. "Heart failure is still increasing in both incidence and prevalence," said Douglas J. Pearce, M.D., Medical Director of the Advanced Heart Failure Program. "Saint Thomas Heart remains at the forefront of cardiovascular care. We take a comprehensive, multidisciplinary team approach to the management of this complex disease." According to Tony Joseph, M.D. and CEO of The Healthcare Accreditation Colloquium, heart failure is a growing health problem in the U.S. with 550,000 new cases diagnosed each year. "Half of these individuals will die within five years," said Dr. Joseph. "Organizations like Saint Thomas Heart recognize that heart failure is a chronic disease and requires a response in all four domains of heart failure: the community, the hospital, the clinicians, and science. For the general public accreditation as a Heart Failure Institute means that the hospital puts a focus on both quantity and quality of life across the entire continuum of care." Saint Thomas Health Services launched Saint Thomas Heart in 2007, a combined entity that utilizes all heart services on two campuses, including Mid-State Cardiology at Baptist Hospital in Nashville. This combined group of 60 heart specialists sees more than 130,000 heart patients in a 69-county region throughout Middle Tennessee and into southern Kentucky. For more information on Saint Thomas Hospital, visit http://www.stthomas.org. |