Improving the process: WakeMed implements three simple innovations to make sure heart, stroke and declining patients get treatment quicker.

What is at the heart of innovation? In a hospital, innovation can be something as complex as a multi-million dollar CAT scanner that revolutionizes cardiac diagnostics or as simple as improving a process to get patients the care they need as quickly as possible. In the past year, WakeMed Health & Hospitals has implemented three innovations to help ensure heart attack, stroke and medically fragile patients leave the hospital in the best possible condition.

In the event of a heart attack, stroke or medical crisis, a delay until the patient receives treatment can cause irreparable damage. For a heart attack, delay can mean the loss of heart muscle. For a stroke, it can mean the loss of brain function. For a hospitalized patient who is medically declining, it can be the difference between life and death. At WakeMed, teams from specialty departments throughout the hospital respond at a moment's notice to heart attacks, strokes or declining conditions. The results of the changes have been outstanding.

* The Code STEMI program enables a specialized team of caregivers to rapidly respond to patients suffering from acute coronary syndrome and acute myocardial infarction, or heart attack. Code STEMI has reduced the time it takes acute coronary syndrome and heart-attack patients to receive valuable treatment in the heart-catheterization lab to open the blocked arteries. Since Code STEMI's initiation, time of arrival at the hospital to intervention has been reduced from an average of 124 minutes to 78 minutes. When every minute counts, saving 46 minutes is allowing WakeMed to save more lives.

* Code STROKE is called when a patient exhibits symptoms of stroke. Code STROKE has reduced the average time it takes to get a stroke patient from the point of arrival to the diagnostic brain scan from an average of 68 minutes to only 18 minutes. Since the program began in April, 38 patients arriving at the hospital within two hours of the onset of stroke symptoms have benefited from Code STROKE.

* Rapid Response Team is called when a hospital caregiver notices the first sign of patient decline, including a change in vital signs or simply a "gut" feeling that something is wrong...