A recent New York Times article titled “A Sea Change in Treating Heart Attacks” highlights the 38 percent decrease in coronary heart disease deaths from 2003 to 2013, a result “spurred by better control of cholesterol and blood pressure, reduced smoking rates, improved medical treatments — and faster care of people in the throes of a heart attack.”

The article chronicles how the ACC’s Door to Balloon (D2B) initiative has helped more than 1,200 hospitals nationwide improve the timeliness of reperfusion therapy for patients with heart attacks by facilitating the adoption of evidence and guideline-based best practices.

Thanks to the D2B initiative, “Now, nearly all hospitals treat at least half their patients in 61 minutes or less…” D2B is part of ACC’s suite of quality initiatives, designed to support local efforts with structured quality improvement projects to achieve specific goals.

Building on the D2B initiative’s success, last year the ACC launched Surviving MI, a quality initiative to help hospitals reduce 30-day mortality rates for heart attack patients through organizational culture change and the creation of a hospital learning network.

Learn more about D2B, Surviving MI and Hospital to Home, part of ACC’s Quality Improvement for Institutions, at CVQuality.ACC.org.