SALISBURY – Consistently ranked in the top ten percent of hospitals in North Carolina for heart attack care by NC Hospital Quality Center, Rowan Regional Medical Center has now received the designation of a Fully-Accredited Cycle IV Chest Pain Center with Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI) from the Society of Cardiovascular Patient Care.
    “This distinction as an Accredited Chest Pain Center is a great honor and a testament to the hard work and dedication of our entire hospital,” said Dari Caldwell, president of Rowan Regional.  “Knowing that heart attacks are the leading cause of death in America, we strive to treat and identify the causes of chest pain as quickly as possible.”
    Rowan Regional Medical Center also offers a preventive and rehabilitative component to heart care through the Cardiac Rehabilitation & Wellness Center, which opened in 1988 and is nationally certified by the American Association of Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Rehabilitation.  
The Chest Pain Center at Rowan Regional Medical Center takes a protocol-driven and systematic approach to patient management that allows physicians to reduce time to treatment during the critical early stages of a heart attack, when treatments are most effective, and to better monitor patients when it is not clear whether they are having a coronary event.  Such observation helps ensure that a patient is neither sent home too early nor needlessly admitted.
Rowan Regional’s Chest Pain Center has demonstrated its expertise and commitment to quality patient care by meeting or exceeding a wide set of stringent criteria and completing on-site evaluations by a review team from the Society of Cardiovascular Patient Care.  Key areas in which a Chest Pain Center must demonstrate expertise include:
•    Integrating the emergency department with the local emergency medical system
•    Assessing, diagnosing, and treating patients quickly
•    Effectively treating patients with low risk for acute coronary syndrome and no assignable cause for their symptoms
•    Having a functional design that promotes optimal patient care
•    Insuring Chest Pain Center personnel competency and training
•    Maintaining organizational structure and commitment
•    Continually seeking to improve processes and procedures
•    Supporting community outreach programs that educate the public to promptly seek medical care if they display symptoms of a possible heart attack
More than five million Americans visit hospitals each year with chest pain. The goal of the Society of Cardiovascular Patient Care is to significantly reduce the mortality rate of these patients by teaching the public to recognize and react to the early symptoms of a possible heart attack, reduce the time that it takes to receive treatment and increases the accuracy and effectiveness of treatment.
For more information on the heart and vascular programs of Rowan Regional Medical Center, visit www.rowan.org or call 704-210-5000.