Choose Wesley Medical Center When Your Heart is on The Line

The time to choose a hospital is before you are faced with an emergency. Wesley Medical Center is Hattiesburg’s only Accredited Chest Pain Center and the only area hospital with Accredited Heart Failure Care.

Building on its commitment to become a leader in cardiac care, Wesley Medical Center  applied for and was granted full accreditation by The Society of Cardiovascular Patient Care – a designation held by only 12 percent of hospitals in the United States. In addition, Wesley became the first hospital in south Mississippi to be awarded Heart Failure Accreditation. Wesley was the 2nd hospital in Mississippi and the 58th hospital nationwide to earn this distinction.

Minutes Matter

The first signs of a heart attack set off a risk-filled race against time. With each passing minute, the heart muscle is damaged further, and the patient's condition becomes more serious.
When you are experiencing chest pain and possibly having a heart attack, every minute counts. Knowing where to go for the gold standard or emergency cardiac care can be the difference between life and death.

The Society of Cardiovascular Patient Care is a non-profit international society that promotes protocol-based medicine and the adoption of process improvement science by healthcare providers to address heart attacks and acute heart failure.  In September 2011, The Society of Cardiovascular Patient Care granted Wesley Medical Center a full three-year Chest Pain Center accreditation. 

Accredited Chest Pain Centers undergo a rigorous evaluation process by The Society of Cardiovascular Patient Care based on their ability to assess, diagnose, and treat patients quickly and effectively, clinical outcome statistics and comparisons nationwide.

The goal of Wesley Medical Center is to shorten the time from a patient’s initial cardiac symptoms to treatment. Accredited Chest Pain Centers have been found to reduce the mortality rates of patients suffering from chest pain through a very specific protocol-driven and systematic approach which allows physicians to:

• Treat patients more quickly during the critical early stages of heart attack, when treatments are most effective
• Better monitor patients when it’s not clear whether they are having a coronary event, which ensures that patients are not sent home too early or admitted to the hospital unnecessarily.

This designation means that any patient who comes to Wesley Medical Center experiencing chest pain can be confident he or she is receiving care that meets or exceeds the highest national standards of care. 

Heart failure is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the United States. Approximately five million patients in the United States have heart failure. In addition, heart failure patients are responsible for 12 to 15 million physician office visits per year and 6.5 million hospital days. SCPC’s goal is to help facilities manage the heart failure patient more efficiently and improve patient outcomes.

Wesley Medical Center has demonstrated its expertise and commitment to quality patient care by meeting or exceeding a wide set of stringent criteria and undergoing an onsite review by a team of SCPC’s accreditation review specialists. This protocol-driven and systematic approach to patient management allows physicians to reduce time to treatment and to risk stratify patients to decrease their length of stay. Key areas in which a facility with Heart Failure Accreditation must demonstrate expertise include the following: 

• Emergency Department Integration with Emergency Medical Services
• Emergency Assessment of Patients with Symptoms of Acute Decompensated Heart Failure-Diagnosis
• Risk Stratification of the Heart Failure Patient
• Treatment for Patients Presenting to the Emergency Department in Heart Failure
• Heart Failure Discharge Criteria from the Emergency Department, Observation Stay or Inpatient Stay
• Heart Failure Patient Education in the Emergency Department, Observation and Inpatient Unit
• Personnel, Competencies and Training
• Process Improvement
• Organizational Structure and Commitment
• Heart Failure Community Outreach

Positive patient outcomes depend on timely intervention, diagnosis and treatment. Cardiologists, emergency department physicians and patient care staff at Wesley Medical Center consistently demonstrate expertise in streamlined diagnosis and treatment, integration with paramedics/EMS, community education and other key factors that ensure better outcomes for patients. 

When it comes to your heart, choose Wesley Medical Center for the gold standard in chest pain treatment.