Professionals

Acute Myocardial Infarction

Over 300,000 Medicare patients are hospitalized for heart attack (acute myocardial infarction or AMI) each year. Many do not receive important therapies that are known to be beneficial. The national Acute Myocardial Infarction Project focuses on increasing the use of appropriate care processes to improve patient outcomes. The goal is to lower the one-year mortality rate for Medicare beneficiaries following hospital admission for heart attack.

Main Objective

To decrease the morbidity and mortality associated with AMI in Medicare beneficiaries.

Quality Indicators

• To increase the use of the following care processes for patients hospitalized with AMI:
  • Administration of aspirin within 24 hours before or after hospital arrival.
  • Administration of beta-blocker within 24 hours of hospital arrival. 
  • Timely initiation of reperfusion therapy (either thrombolytic agent or percutaneous coronary intervention).
  • Aspirin prescribed at discharge.
  • Beta-blocker prescribed at discharge.
  • Angiotension converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor prescribed at discharge if left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) is impaired.
  • Smoking cessation counseling during hospitalization.

Tools & Resources

American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology (AHA/ACC)
The AHA/ACC Report on Measuring and Improving Quality of Care provides information on the current state of quality indicators for heart disease.

Heart Care – Heart Failure & Myocardial Infarction
The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation are undertaking an initiative to raise physician awareness about disparities in medical care, beginning with cardiac care. News, guidelines, chartbook on disparities in health care and articles.

Hospital Quality Initiative

MedQIC is a website where healthcare professionals can find and share quality improvement resources and browse through recommended interventions developed by colleagues and experts in their field. MedQIC offers tools, articles and links to resources about how to transform organizational culture, adopt health information technology, redesign care processes, and measure and report performance.