More than 1,000 hospitals in the U.S. and internationally, and 30 other partner organizations took part in the effort, helping to drive a 30 percent reduction in D2B times for heart attack patients between 2005 and 2010. In 2011, an article in the journal Circulation noted that more than 90 percent of heart attack patients who had an angioplasty were treated within the recommended 90 minutes after arriving in the hospital.
In addition to being linked to lower in-hospital mortality rates, shorter D2B times also have been associated with less damage to the heart, shorter hospital stays, and lower healthcare costs.
“Measuring progress has been key to improvements in door to balloon times,” said William J. Oetgen, MD, MBA, FACC, Executive Vice President of Science, Education, and Quality at the ACC. Hospitals participating in D2B can benchmark their success through the ACC’s National Cardiovascular Data Registry (NCDR).
An NQF-endorsed measure also has aided these efforts. NQF in 2007 first endorsed a measure quantifying the percentage of heart attack patients who receive an angioplasty within 90 minutes of arrival in an emergency room. The measure was re-endorsed multiple times, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) included the measure in its Value-Based Purchasing Program for the first time in 2013.
Building on the D2B initiative’s success, last year the ACC launched Surviving MI, a new quality initiative for hospitals to help reduce 30-day mortality rates for heart attack patients through organizational culture change and the creation of a hospital learning network.
