Accredited Chest Pain Center logoWalterboro, S.C.—Colleton Medical Center (CMC) has earned Chest Pain Center Accreditation from the Society of Cardiovascular Patient Care (SCPC), an international not-for-profit organization that focuses on transforming cardiovascular care by assisting healthcare facilities with creating communities of excellence that bring together quality, cost and patient satisfaction.

“This recognition is a tremendous accomplishment for our hospital, staff, physicians and especially for our community,” said Anna Jonason, PhD, RN, Chief Nursing Officer. “This was a very rigorous process, and required intense review of many aspects of the emergency and intensive care we provide, enabling us to identify opportunities to improve or expedite that care so patients with heart disease receive top-notch services in the areas of prevention, early recognition and treatment.”

As an Accredited Chest Pain Center, CMC ensures that patients who arrive at the hospital complaining of chest pain or other symptoms of a heart attack receive the treatment necessary during the critical window of time when the integrity of the heart muscle can be preserved. To become accredited, Colleton Medical Center engaged in precise reevaluation and refinement to integrate the healthcare industry’s successful practices and newest paradigms into its cardiac care processes. This distinction signifies that CMC has enhanced the quality of care for patients and has demonstrated its commitment to higher standards.

“People tend to wait when they think they might be having a heart attack, and that’s a mistake,” says Allison Walters, assistant Vice President of Cardiovascular Services for Trident Health. “The average patient arrives in the emergency department more than two hours after the onset of symptoms, but what they don’t realize is that the sooner a heart attack is treated, the less damage to the heart and the better the outcome for the patient.”