Displaying items by tag: Award
Akron Fire Receives Award For Quality, Response Time Of Care
Time matters. Just ask the Akron Fire Department who was just awarded the 2016 Gold Mission Lifeline Award from the American Heart Association for their quality of care and response time related to cardiac care.
"For them to be recognized by an organization that is national, that hits home very well," said AFD District Chief Joe Natko.
The fire department follows guidelines from the American Heart Association to alert hospitals before the patients arrive in order to quickly provide care. EMS contacts the hospital as soon as they realize they are dealing with STEMI heart attacks which can be fatal.
"Part of our training deals with how to recognize it, how to treat it and how to get someone to the hospital very quickly, even quicker than we normally do," said Natko. "They have to set up the Cath lab and they have to get things going ahead of time before we even get there," said Natko. "So when we walk in the door they're ready to receive that patient and treat that patient in a timely fashion."
According to the American Heart Association, the Akron Fire Department joins only 565 other EMS agencies in the U.S. and is only 1 of 57 in Ohio that have received the award.