Emergency Community AED Program
Next time you’re at work or watching your child or grandchild compete at a school sporting event, look around you. Try to imagine what would happen if someone was stricken with cardiac arrest. What if it was someone you knew or a member of your family? What if that person’s heart stopped? Could you or anyone on site save a life?
If the answer to the question is no, you may want to suggest that your company or community organization get involved in Saint Vincent’s Project Heart Start, a program designed to put equipment in place throughout the community to save the lives of victims of cardiac arrest.
As the region’s authority in emergency medicine and heart care, Saint Vincent created Project Heart Start to extend its reach in providing heart care beyond the health center campus and out into the community.
Each year, 225,000 Americans are struck by sudden cardiac arrest. Approximately 95 percent of them do not survive. Chances of survival decrease seven percent to 10 percent every minute.
Because every second counts, access to an automated external defibrillator (AED) can considerably improve survival rates. That immediate access is available through the Saint Vincent Heart Center’s Project Heart Start.
Project Heart Start makes AEDs readily accessible in businesses, churches, schools, emergency response vehicles and places where people congregate throughout the community. AEDs are designed for use at the scene of a cardiac arrest before paramedics arrive. They are small, portable and easy to use. Audible and visual prompts tell users what to do. In most states, anyone with minimal training in CPR and AED operation can use an AED.
Since 1999, more than 150 AEDs have been purchased and placed in schools, churches, businesses and community centers in the region through Project Heart Start. Project Heart Start is made possible by a partnership between the Saint Vincent Heart Center and the AED manufacturer Medtronic Physio-Control. Thanks to this partnership, AED packages can be obtained through Saint Vincent at a reduced cost.
Saint Vincent Heart Center’s Project Heart Start program also provides medical direction and supervision, ongoing professional management and assistance in meeting federal, state and local requirements, quality assurance in the form of quarterly reviews of all events that occur (events are downloaded into a Saint Vincent Heart Center database), and a single point of contact.
You and your organization can help save precious lives. For more information about Project Heart Start, call 814-452-5706 today.