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The New York Times this week is reporting on a new study on the time it takes for post-heart-attack patients to be moved from an unequipped to an equipped hospital for further procedures. The study found that too few patients are transferred within accepted timeframes.
Standard medical guidelines recommend 30 minutes for patients to be transferred from a hospital not "equipped to perform lifesaving procedures to open blocked arteries" to those that are. Only 11% of heart attack patients are transferred within that time. This comes out to approximately one in ten patients who subsequently reap lower fatality rates due to their hospitals' quick actions.
Researchers studied 14,821 heart attack patients who were transferred to better-equipped hospitals. Only 1,627 of them were transferred within 30 minutes (11%). 56% were transferred within an hour and 35% within an hour and a half.
Those who were transferred within a half hour died 2.7% of the time. Those whose transfers were delayed, died at more than twice the rate (6%).
The research was conducted at Duke University. Their data was of angioplasty patients between January 2007 and March 2010, and was compiled from the National Cardiovascular Data Registry’s Acute Coronary Treatment and Intervention Outcomes Network.
As a practicing medical malpractice, wrongful death, and personal injury attorney in New York, I deal with the consequences of substandard medical practice like the trend in this article every day.
If you would like more information about how medical malpractice and accident cases work in the state of New York, I encourage you to explore my educational website. If you have legal questions, I urge you to pick up the phone and call me at 516-487-8207 or by e-mail at lawmed10@yahoo.com to answer your questions. That's what I do every day. I welcome your call.
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