ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Swedish Medical Center temporarily shut down a critical service that provides life-saving care for heart attack patients last weekend in an unusual move cardiologists fear could have hurt patient outcomes and affect the facility's accreditation.
In STEMIs, one of the worst kinds of heart attacks, hospitals have one superior treatment that must happen fast to save a patient's life. Cardiologists insert a catheter and expand a bubble to unblock an artery inside a hospital's "cath lab."
But Swedish Medical Center in Englewood confirmed it closed its cath lab last weekend for "planned operational downtime," forcing patients with critical heart attacks to receive care at other locations.
"A cath lab should not have planned downtime," said Dr. Payal Kohli, a cardiologist and 9NEWS' medical expert. "As a cardiologist I am shocked, and I am aghast that there are cath labs in my own city where they are having planned down time."
Kohli compared the closure of a cath lab to closing down the hospital's emergency room. "By definition, it's a 24/7 facility," she said. Two other Denver hospitals contacted by 9NEWS said they don't schedule downtime for their cath labs and would only close them in exceedingly rare circumstances.
A Swedish spokesperson did not answer questions from 9NEWS about why the hospital closed its cath lab, nor how often it closes the service down. Instead, spokesperson Richard Grissom said the hospital has not had any delays or diversions.
"Our cath lab is open and will be this weekend," he said in an emailed statement. "We have operational downtimes and do extensive preparation, including notifying appropriate stakeholders."
Stakeholders include ambulance providers. Denver Health said its paramedics "know about the issue at Swedish and follow normal procedures to bring impacted patients to other hospitals."
Swedish is accredited as a chest pain center by the American College of Cardiology. It received a level of distinction called a "primary PCI," which the ACC said is reserved for hospitals with cath lab care "available 24/7 every day of the year." The ACC did not list an exception for operational downtime.
"This hospital really risks losing their accreditation because of what they're doing," Kohli said.
But more than accreditation, she worries about patients.
"Even a few minutes could mean the difference between life and death," she said. "If you show up at the cath lab or the emergency room and realize that it’s closed and have to divert to go somewhere else — that could mean a tremendous change in the prognosis of the patient."
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