A Valentine to Your Heart

This valentines month, I’m highlighting our Cardiac Care Outcomes Assessment Program that improves the quality of cardiac care across the state (and a bit beyond). Cardiac COAP believes that health care is best guided by physicians; that health care quality is best measured by analyzing clinical data from a medical record; and that health care quality improvement is best achieved through universal program participation. We work to improve quality of care for percutaneous cardiac intervention, adult cardiac surgery, and newly, transcatheter aortic valve replacement. We let providers know how they’re doing as compared to peers across the region and provide a safe forum for discussing challenges in cardiac care delivery. Our goal is to improve care among all our member hospitals, to raise all boats.

One of our successful initiatives has focused on early extubation, removal of the breathing tube as early possible after cardiac surgery. Leaving the breathing tube in too long can lead to infections such as pneumonia as well as longer length of hospital stay. The national average for early extubation is 62% but our Washington State hospitals are doing much better than that national average. We still have variation site to site, and room to improve to get to our benchmark of 93%, but have seen improvement year over year.

Another improvement initiative, this focused on percutaneous cardiac intervention, has been to support radial access (through the wrist) to the heart. This is associated with a much lower rate of bleeding complications and therefore lower mortality risk. Our whole state has done better year to year, from about 57% in 2019 to 77% in 2023. We still have work to do, we want this to be at 89.5% and not everyone is there, but we continue to improve.

To catch up on our great work,  watch last month’s January quarterly regional webinar as our members discuss trends in data across Washington state and share best practices. January features: Dr. Dan Mumme, Cardiac Surgeon with MultiCare Tacoma General Hospital reviewing our midyear cardiac surgery data; Dr. Drew Baldwin, Interventional Cardiologist at Virginia Mason Hospital reviewing our PCI data; and our Cardiac COAP Medical Director Dr. Ravi Hira, Interventional Cardiologist at MultiCare reviewing and discussing our new TVT data. Members who view regional webinar recordings (not annual meeting recordings) are eligible to earn CNE or CME credits.

Save the date for our Annual Meeting to be held on June 4!