Dubai : The Rashid Hospital in Dubai has surpassed international standards as far as critical time in managing heart patients is concerned.
Dr Fahd Omar Baslaib, Head of Cardiology, said the hospital takes just 24 minutes to unblock an artery with an injection from the time a heart patient arrives at the hospital. The global standard for this door-to-needle time is less than 30 minutes.
JCI certification
Similarly, the door-to-balloon time taken to unblock an artery through angioplasty is 74 minutes against a global benchmark of less than 90 minutes, he said.
Speaking at a conference yesterday, Dr Baslaib said the Cardiology Department at Rashid Hospital received 1,600 patients, 40 per cent of them with heart attacks, in 2008. A total of 900 cardiac procedures were performed in 2008, he added. Dr Shawqi Khoori, CEO of Rashid Hospital, said it's the first hospital in the Middle East and the fourth outside the US to get a certification from the Joint Commission International (JCI) for best practices in cardiac care.
Major benchmark
The US-based JCI — the world's first and only WHO Collaborating Centre for improving patient safety — granted the certification in Acute Coronary Syndrome to the cardiology department.
It also incorporated some practices followed by Rashid Hospital as an international benchmark for other hospitals to follow around the world.
These practices pertain to patient care mapping, a multidisciplinary system for managing cases and collaborative packages like laboratories, pharmacies and the IT department, Dr Ahmad Gabroun, specialist registrar of the cardiology department, said.
