Variability in maximal suggested door-in-door-out time for hospitals transferring patients for primary angioplasty in STEMI.

OBJECTIVES: We derived a formula for maximal suggested door-in-door-out time (DIDO) for hospitals that do not perform primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) for ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). BACKGROUND: Efforts to minimize DIDO at non-PCI hospitals can improve door-to-balloon time (D2B). Targeting a maximal suggested DIDO for a transferring hospital can influence reperfusion strategy. METHODS: We examined time to treatment intervals for 193 STEMI patients who underwent primary PCI at our hospital. D2B in transferred patients (D2BT ) was divided into 3 intervals: transferring hospital DIDO, inter-hospital transport time, and interventional time. We defined maximal suggested DIDO as the maximum DIDO that would allow PCI with D2BT ≤ 120 minutes. RESULTS: D2B was higher in transfer compared to on-site patients (147 ± 52 vs. 75 ± 44 minutes, P < 0.0001). In transfer patients, treatment time intervals were: DIDO 80 ± 42 minutes, transport time 37 ± 18 minutes, interventional time 35 ± 16 minutes. The greatest variability in D2BT was related to DIDO. We estimated that maximal suggested DIDO = [120 - (transport time plus interventional time)]. Using a fixed interventional time of 40 minutes, we simplified this as: maximal DIDO = 80 - transport time. Maximal suggested DIDO for 4 transferring hospitals in our network ranged from 1 to 65 minutes. DIDO under the hospital-specific threshold was the strongest predictor of achieving D2BT <120 minutes. CONCLUSIONS: Transferring hospitals' maximal suggested DIDO is variable, and can be calculated from inter-hospital transport time. Instead of a universal target DIDO (e.g., <30 minutes), maximal suggested DIDO can be calculated individually for each non-PCI hospital within a STEMI network.

Developing a new hybrid revascularization program: a road map for hospital managers and physician leaders.

Hybrid coronary revascularization, which involves minimally invasive direct coronary artery bypass surgery using the left internal mammary artery to left anterior descending and percutaneous coronary intervention using drug-eluting stents for the remaining diseased coronary vessels, is an innovative approach to decrease the morbidity of conventional surgery. Little information is available to guide hospital managers and physician leaders in implementing a hybrid revascularization program. In this article, we describe the people-process-technology issues that managers and leaders are likely to encounter as they develop a hybrid revascularization program in their practice.