Oak Lawn, Ill. – Putting a lot of “heart” into your work does pay off!
This axiom was underscored when Advocate Christ Medical Center recently announced that, for the fourth time, it has achieved certification of its heart rehabilitation program by the American Association of Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Rehabilitation (AACVPR).
The national organization granted the medical center another three-year recertification after reviewing the cardiac rehabilitation department’s staff competencies, health outcomes, patient satisfaction scores, heart-risk reduction, emergency management capabilities, individualized plans of care and continuing educational opportunities provided for staff development.
“Certification is an affirmation that cardiac patients in a program are receiving the highest quality of rehabilitative care,” said Dinker A. Trivedi, MD, medical director of cardiac rehabilitation at Christ Medical Center. “To achieve certification, we had to demonstrate consistent performance of patient care according to latest national standards and guidelines and evidence-based research.”
The Christ Medical Center cardiac rehabilitation program includes two sites of practice – the new Outpatient Pavilion on the main medical center campus in Oak Lawn and the High Tech Medical Park in Palos Heights, Ill. Between the two sites, the program is one of the largest of its kind in the state of Illinois, providing care annually for more than 18,000 outpatient visits and 3,500 in-hospital visits to patients to have undergone open heart surgery, said Gino Gentile RN MS, manager of cardiodiagnostics and cardiopulmonary rehabilitation. The cardiac program team includes nine part-time nurses, three exercise physiologists and two assistant clinical managers.
The AACVPR is the only organization certifying cardiac and pulmonary rehabilitation programs. Certification helps heart patients determine to which program they will turn for rehabilitative care. The standards required for certification also are becoming increasingly recognized by health insurance companies as essential elements when measuring a program’s performance in patient care.
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About Advocate Christ Medical Center
Advocate Christ Medical Center is part of Advocate Health Care, which is one of the nation’s leading health care networks. A not-for-profit, 694-bed, premier teaching institution with more than 1,200 affiliated physicians, Christ Medical Center is a leader in health care and one of the major referral hospitals in the Midwest in a number of specialties, including cardiovascular services, heart, kidney and lung transplantation, neurosciences, oncology, orthopedics and women’s health. The hospital also has one of the busiest Level I trauma centers in Illinois providing emergency care for more than 100,000 patient visits annually and is a leader in breakthrough technologies, including eICU® (electronic intensive care unit) monitoring, robotic da Vinci Surgery System® and CyberKnife® Radiosurgery. For the last three years (2012-2014), the medical center has been named to the Truven Health 100 Top Hospitals® list. U.S. News & World Report has ranked the medical center among the nation’s leading providers for cardiology and heart surgery, geriatric medicine, gynecology and neurology/neurosurgery and rated it overall as being among the top three hospitals in Illinois. The hospital is also recognized by the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) as a Magnet Center. Magnet status represents the highest honor in the nursing profession. To obtain more information or to visit our newsroom, log on to: www.advocatehealth.com/christ.