Is your cath lab making any of these common mistakes? Original science (2019) from Accreditation for Cardiovascular Excellence (ACE) identifies 11 specific domains where most cath labs under review only partially met or did not meet ACE quality standards to help target quality improvement efforts, broadly, with tips on how to achieve quality improvement gains.
These findings are reviewed in the context of ACE’s newly updated 2020 Cath/PCI standards with one NEW area for the focus of timely quality improvement efforts in your organization.
ACE Standards Focus Quality Improvement Efforts
Two weeks ago, we announced the release of our newly updated, openly available 2020 standards for the cardiac catheterization laboratory, and last week we did a deeper dive into how those standards were developed and what's notable and new in the document.
But as our quality standards are geared towards focusing quality improvement efforts—the standards "set a bar that facilities can use to compare themselves to," says ACE's Chief Medical Officer, Bonnie Weiner, MD, MBA—we also wanted to take an opportunity to review all of the standards for those domains and areas where organizations most commonly demonstrate shortcomings upon comprehensive accreditation review.
In our recent award-winning poster from the American College of Cardiology's 2019 Quality Summit, we reviewed quantitative and qualitative data from 14 accreditation reviews to identify those domains where facilities most commonly fell short of meeting ACE quality standards, finding 11 domains and 5 broad areas for improvement. We add an 6th area to that original list, reflective of our new Cardiogenic Shock standards which facilities should ensure they have integrated into their procedures and protocols.
