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Lutheran Hospital announced Thursday it has become the eighth hospital in the United States to be designated a Heart Failure Institute.
The designation was made by the Healthcare Accreditation Colloquium, based in Upper Arlington, Ohio. The first such designation was made in September 2008, and most hospitals that have so far received the recognition are in Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.
Being designated a Heart Failure Institute means Lutheran has met the colloquium’s standards for providing a range of care to patients whose heart function is getting progressively worse, CEO Joe Dorko said.
“It’s a continuum of a disease,” Dorko said.
At the end of the continuum, for patients whose heart failure is most severe, often the only option is heart transplant – a procedure Lutheran has performed since 1985. But as a Heart Failure Institute, Lutheran works with doctors across a 23-county region to ensure that patients stay as active and healthy as possible, Dorko said.
The accreditation involved a series of applications and a site visit from a team designated by the colloquium.
“Lutheran is an impressive organization committed to its patients and community,” Elaine Greer, a member of the review team, said in a statement. Greer is an advanced-practice nurse at Saint Thomas Hospital in Nashville, Tenn., also designated a Heart Failure Institute.
To maintain the designation, Lutheran will have to steadily improve its operation to meet increasingly rigorous standards.
“When we get reaccredited in a couple years, the standards will be higher,” Dorko said.
About 600,000 Americans a year are diagnosed with heart failure. Providing them with better care will cut the number of re-admissions to the hospital and cut health care expenses, Dorko said.
