Prairie Cardiovascular initiated the development of the Prairie STAT Heart Program in August 2004. The Prairie STAT Heart Program was one of the first in the country to focus on streamlining emergency care to meet the national goal of providing angioplasty (a non-surgical procedure to treat diseased arteries) within 90 to 120 minutes from a patient’s arrival at the community hospital (often referred to as door-to-balloon time). This insures that the patient located in the rural community receives emergent heart care as fast or faster than patients in larger urban areas. Since the launch of the Prairie STAT Heart Program in December 2004 in Springfield, Illinois and in August 2007 in Carbondale, Illinois, the program has served 358 patients in central Illinois and 24 patients in southern Illinois who suffer from ST-elevated acute myocardial infarctions (the worst kind of heart attack). The challenge in rural communities had been to quickly determine which patients were having the worst kind of heart attacks and then to mobilize the transportation system and receiving hospital to move the patient to an experienced cath lab where highly specialized treatments and devices could be used such as St. John’s Hospital and Memorial Medical Center in Springfield and Memorial Hospital of Carbondale.
