Recognition

The provision of optimal care to each heart attack and sudden cardiac arrest victim in Wyoming via a dynamic, seamless, thoroughly integrated, working statewide emergency care system.

Patient level data (time of symptom onset, age, etc.) and provider level data (EMS on-scene time, hospital reperfusion rate, discharge status, etc.) will be collected by all participating Wyoming hospitals and submitted into ACTION Registry – Get With The Guidelines. The Wyoming data will be confidentially released to the AHA and an independent University, to analyze and report the data. Each hospital will have access its own data and 2) an aggregated (and blinded) quarterly statewide report. Providers performing at levels below the regional and/or national average will be contacted confidentially by American Heart Association staff to review the data further and identify opportunities to improve future patient care and reported outcomes.

Mission: Lifeline Wyoming Committee will be established and the first meeting is to be scheduled in October 2012 in Casper, Wyoming. Each hospital and EMS agency will identify one representative to serve as the voting member for any such formal group decisions and it is asked that this voting representative attend the meeting in October. Other interested EMS and hospital staff are welcome to attend and participate in the Committee meeting and any subcommittees that will be formed: Education, Protocols and Quality Improvement.

This Committee will review patient care data, provide recommendations to improve quality, establish the statewide protocols, identify and eliminate educational knowledge gaps, identify and eliminate equipment gaps for STEMI and SCA patients.

Governor Matt Mead joined the American Heart Association and the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust to announce a $7.1 million project to improve heart attack care in Wyoming. The project known as “Mission: Life­line Wyoming” will fund efforts to close the gaps separating heart attack pa­tients from timely access to care.
“Thanks to the $7.1 million in funding the American Heart Association will be able to get right to work putting in place elements needed to address heart at­tack response in a rural area,” Governor Mead said. “This includes ambulance services attaining the equipment they need to better diagnose the most deadly heart attacks, training for EMS and hospital personnel and tracking data for quality improvement. Heart disease is the number one killer in America and in Wyoming. This initiative takes aim at that statistic and will have significant impact especially because it targets rural residents.”

The Helmsley Charitable Trust contributed $5.9 million to this project. Addi­tional support has been received from First Interstate Bank and The Wyoming Community Foundation’s Working for Wyoming Fund. Stakeholders from across the state will be involved in the implementation of Mission: Lifeline Wyoming. This includes large and small hospitals, ambulance services and the Wyoming Department of Health.

“We know that in the case of Sudden Cardiac Arrest, for example, a victim’s chance of survival decreases by 7 to 10 percent for every minute they go un­treated. So, it is critical that care be provided immediately,” said Dr. Gordon Tomaselli, National President of the American Heart Association. He is also a professor and director of the Division of Cardiology at the John Hopkins Uni­versity School of Medicine. “This program will help to make dramatic im­provements in the system of care, reducing the amount of time it takes heart attack victims to receive the appropriate care. It will have an equally dramatic effect on survival rates.”

The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust has invested $17.8 mil­lion in Wyoming health care through their Rural Healthcare Program. The program was established to address the health care needs in states like Wyo­ming, where access to care is challenging because residents are spread across a much wider geographic area. Other gifts went to cancer treatment in Sheridan, as well as telemedicine facilities in Gillette, Douglas, Thermopolis and Afton.

This will be a major collaborative effort between the Wyoming Office of EMS, Wyoming’s healthcare partners, the American Heart Association, the Helmsley Charitable Trust, and all other stakeholder’s. We will provide updates on the progress of the project and resources here on our website and through the WATRS system.