The Meriter Heart Hospital - A Cardiovascular Center of Excellence

Years of research, planning and design came together with the summer 2007 opening of the Meriter Heart Hospital, the first hospital of its kind in the region.

"The Heart Hospital is a new concept in care, locally, that showcases the latest technology and care teams that are among the best in the country," says Meriter President and CEO Jim Woodward. "It's yet another way that Meriter, as a not-for-profit hospital, continues to focus on our mission to heal, to teach and to serve."

• 45 private family-friendly patient rooms, all of which are equipped to handle patient-care needs from cardiac intensive care on arrival to stable discharge to home.
• 18 short-stay beds, in private rooms, adjacent to the procedure area to allow for efficient admission and discharge for patients who do not require an overnight stay.
• 5 state-of-the-art digital cardiac, vascular and electrophysiology procedure labs, with room to grow.
• Direct elevator access to the emergency room, operating rooms, medical imaging and the helicopter landing pad.
• EPIC electronic medical record system, which minimizes the need for patients to give the same information more than once.
• State-of-the-art digital image management system, which enables physicians and others to view cardiac and other medical images on computers, both inside and outside the hospital.
• A hands-free wireless communication system that allows nurses to be notified immediately about their patients' needs in a quiet environment that essentially eliminates overhead paging.
• Sleeper sofas for family members, flat panel televisions, and spectacular views of Madison and its lakes will add to the healing environment patients and families experience.

To learn more about the Meriter Heart Hospital's services, visit the following pages. You can also contact our Heart Hospital staff at (608) 417-6259 or hearthospital@meriter.com.

• Coronary Artery Disease Services
• Open Heart Surgery Services
• Electrophysiology Services
• Heart Valve Disease Services
• Adult Congenital Heart Defect Services
• Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD) Services
• Other Surgical Services

Related services include cardiac rehabilitation and preventive cardiology screenings, available through the Meriter Center for Health Promotion.

Commitment to Quality
Quality is important to us and to our patients. The Meriter Heart Hospital participates in many national quality initiatives, which allow us to compare our patient care to the best in the country. We use the data to continuously seek ways to reduce complications and use new techniques to decrease pain, speed recovery and improve outcomes. As a result of our data-driven quality effort:

• Our heart bypass surgery mortality rates have been lower than national benchmarks for the past seven years.
• Our patients who undergo bypass surgery have far fewer complications than the national average.

This commitment to quality has not gone unnoticed. In the past year alone, the hospital has received numerous state and national awards that attest to the quality care delivered here. Those awards include:

• The Wisconsin Forward Governor's Award, the highest level awarded
• Solucient Top 100 Cardiovascular Hospitals
• VHA Leadership Award for Clinical Excellence
• American Heart Association "Get With the Guidelines" Recognition

For more details about the standards of quality to which Meriter Hospital is committed, visit the Commitment to Quality section. For more information about awards received, visit the Meriter Awards section.

Commitment to Customer Service
We ask our patients to rate the service they receive at the Meriter Heart Hospital. The results consistently show us at the top of the range in scores for courtesy and respect shown to patients by their doctors and nurses.

Heart and vascular disease affect patients' families as well. Our patients report being extremely satisfied with the way the Meriter Heart Hospital staff care for their family and friends. We commit to extraordinary customer service in the following ways:

• During heart surgery, a nurse stops by the family's private waiting room every 1 1/2 - 2 hours to update them on the patient's condition and progress through surgery.
• The Meriter Heart Hospital nurses who provide assistance during a patient stay also manage follow-up care in the first weeks after discharge.
• We developed Healing Your Heart, a manual to help heart patients and their families move confidently through recovery and on to a healthy life.

Commitment to Research
The physicians who practice at Meriter Hospital participate in national research studies that help develop new and better treatments for heart disease, keeping the Meriter Heart Hospital at the forefront of the latest breakthroughs in medical knowledge. For details about the clinical research currently taking place at Meriter Hospital, visit our Clinical Research section.

7/28/2008