Vanderbilt Heart has continued to develop and expand quality improvement efforts throughout the organization. Through improvements in processes in care and clinical data management there has been remarkable overall performance in observed to expected (O/E) hospital mortality for major clinical programs.

Door to Balloon Time Improvement:
Vanderbilt Heart and Vascular Institute's door-to-balloon time dropped to a median 64 minutes. This is well below the nationally recommended time of 90 minutes. Vanderbilt Heart works in collaboration with Emergency Medicine to continuously improve patient care. By analyzing our entire care process and collecting data on performance, we have been able to make interventions in ECG acquision, catheterization lab activation, and patient transport - all of which helped us reach our outstanding 64 minute median time.

Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery Mortality Rates Below Target:
The figure 1.0 is the nationally expected mortality rate for heart patients. As you can see from the chart below, Vanderbilt Heart's mortality rates are well below this figure. This means more patients survive at Vanderbilt Heart than is expected nationally.

Pulmonary Vein Isolation (PVI) Procedures:
More than 80 PVI procedures were performed in 2006. Of these, 73 percent of these patients were free of atrial fibrillation during the one-year follow-up.

2007 Mortality Rates: (observed vs. expected)