Systems of Care Overview and Implementation Strategies

Why Mission: Lifeline®?

  • To decrease the mortality and morbidity of the estimated 785,000 Americans who will have their first heart attack each year and the 470,000 Americans who will have a recurrent heart attack.
  • To collaboratively coordinate care among 911 dispatch, EMS, interfacility transport teams, and the destination hospitals Mission Lifeline System of Care Graphic  
  • To aid in meeting AHA/TJC Primary Heart Attack and Acute Heart Attack Ready Certification Requirements
  • To Save Lives

Mission: Lifeline Systems of Care are:

A patient-centered, multidisciplinary team(s) focused on expediting appropriate emergency care for patients with STEMI and are:

  • Supported by AHA Quality Outcomes, Research and Analytics Staff
  • Improved through participation in Mission: Lifeline regional reports, powered by Get With The Guidelines - Coronary Artery Disease
  • Focused on evidence based guidelines for timely reperfusion
  • Regionally coordinated

Systems of Care principles can also be applied to other time-sensitive conditions such as stroke and out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.

Mission: Lifeline Stages of STEMI Systems of Care Implementation

Mission Lifeline STEMI Systems of Care Pyramid 

 Conceptualization 
  • Identify all contributors to the system of care
  • Propose an implementation plan
 Organization
  • Form a small executive task force
  • Identify known gaps in STEMI care for the region
  • Gain consensus for uniform data collection
  • Plan implementation strategies and activities
  • Set measurable goals
 Implementation
  • Announce implementation plans, strategies, activities and goals
  • Each STEMI Receiving Center, EMS agency and STEMI Referring Hospital surveys for their baseline state
  • Identify areas requiring process change at the individual facility/agency level
  • Implement process changes
  • Share strategies
  • Perform continuous evaluation of process improvement activities
 Regionalization
  • Coordinate implementation strategies, activities and goals at a regional level
  • Survey regional processes
  • Convene stakeholders to adopt and implement like processes across the region
  • Share data (anonymized or identified)
 Optimization
  • Perform continuous evaluation of regional process improvement activities
  • Re-survey regional processes

Although the stages of STEMI Systems of Care Implementation are shown as hierarchical, the process is always in a dynamic state and a system of care can therefore move up or down levels based upon the ever-changing state of each participant and overall landscape of the system of care.

Written by American Heart Association editorial staff and reviewed by science and medicine advisors.

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Last Reviewed: Jun 29, 2018