Collaboration, problem solving, reevaluation: foundation for the Heart Center of Excellence

Today's rapidly changing health care environment has thrust upon the caregivers, patients, and their families many challenges. A multidisciplinary team continuously analyzes strengths, weaknesses, and threats to the success of heart centers. Prolonged hospitalization for cardiac surgery patients is consistently identified as a priority with multiple opportunities for improvement. All patients are monitored for variables known to impact length of stay including same day admission, intubation time, out of bed interval following extubation, and delay in postoperative transfer to the progressive cardiac care unit (PCCU). Utilizing collaboration, problem solving, and reevaluation, known as CPR techniques, postoperative intubation time, and the out of bed interval following extubation, have both dramatically decreased. Despite declines in elective, same day admissions and fewer first day postoperative transfers, length of stay following cardiac surgery has also declined. The continuum of patient care has been established from preadmission to postdischarge and up to one year following cardiac surgery. Utilizing CPR techniques allowed us to achieve a best practice model for successfully improving outcomes in heart centers.