APPROACH’s Heart Alert Initiative

In 2004, APPROACH began Heart Alert, a two-part initiative aimed at improving cardiac care throughout the province. The vision is that the right patients receive the right treatment at the right time.

The first part of this initiative focuses on improving avenues of communication between all acute care facilities and emergency medical service ( EMS) providers throughout the province. In southern Alberta this is being accomplished, in part, by promoting point-of-first care ECG performance with rapid electronic transmission to a centralized archiving and retrieval system.

The second part seeks to expand the surveillance capabilities of APPROACH; moving from a procedural registry (commencing with diagnostic catheterization) to that of a disease focus, specifically directed toward patients admitted to hospital with an ACS diagnosis. This module of the registry is this referred to as APPROACH - ACS. The latter was launched at all three tertiary care hospitals in the city of Calgary (Foothills, Peter Lougheed, and Rockyview hospitals) and at the Medicine Hat Regional Hospital between May 2004 and Oct 2005. This expansion in data collection allows for an improved understanding of various referral and treatment processes.

Latest Developments:

Over the past year, Heart Alert personnel have continued to work with the southern Alberta health regions. In the Chinook Health Region Diane Shanks, Regional Director for Critical Care/ Emergency was integral in the decision making for Chinook to proceed with implementing APPROACH-ACS. In Oct 2007 data entry for all acute care facilities in the Chinook Health region was implemented by Nancy Campbell, Clinical Educator for the Critical Care/Emergency program. Today it is the dedication of the nursing and clerical staff at the Lethbridge Regional Hospital – ICU who maintains the data integrity and ultimately the sustainability of this initiative in the Chinook Health Region.

The Chinook Health Region was the first health region, in Alberta, to have region-wide data on all patients admitted with a diagnosis of ACS, with the launch of APPROACH –ACS.

Following implementation of the APPROACH –ACS phase of Heart Alert the Chinook Health Region will decide on an implementation date for the commencement of the electronic ECG transmission and archiving (MUSE). Currently we are anticipating this to occur in 2008.