More than 85 percent of all heart attack patients at Penn Presbyterian are referrals from other hospitals throughout the region. Seconds are crucial when a heart attack occurs- the more time that passes before care, the more the heart muscle is damaged.  When he began working at Penn Presbyterian, it was obvious to Buckwalter that he had to develop a plan to eliminate the road commute. 

“We all worked together to develop a series of time-saving protocols.  In the past, a heart attack patient would have been given a thrombolic drug -- a clot buster.  Today, heart specialists say the better treatment is to get them to a hospital with an interventional catheterization lab and get the artery opened as quickly as possible.”

Since the Heart Rescue Program began, Penn Presbyterian has cut its average time from more than three hours down to less than 90 minutes.

Buckwalter attributes his knowledge of the field, enhanced drive to succeed and ability to strategically plan second-saving initiatives to the education he obtained at Eastern University.  Both a RN to BSN and Fast-Track MBA in Health Administration graduate, Buckwalter also earned the Distinguished Thesis Award and Harold C. Howard Servant Leader Award as a student. 

“The Eastern University education I received at the graduate and undergraduate levels has provided a more holistic outlook at not only life in general, but on the business community as well,” Buckwalter said.  “The MBA instructors exposed me to a vast variety of expertise and knowledge.  They have given me a great toolbox to use and work with for my future.”

Buckwalter has begun to put that toolbox to use.  More than 250 patients have come through his program since its take-off in February 2007.  There are five enrolled regional hospitals: Chestnut Hill Hospital, Cape Regional Medical Center, Nazareth Hospital, Shore Memorial Hospital and Virtua Memorial Hospital-Burlington, NJ; and a local paramedic organization in the Heart Rescue Program.

Buckwalter said,  “The cohort format of the Fast-Track MBA in Health Administration learning was very beneficial because it brought such a diverse group of people together, so I learned a great deal not only from my instructors, but from my peers as well.  The MBA program truly gave me the baseline knowledge to springboard my career to go further in the management realm. Through Eastern, I gathered the education that will shape my life and advance my career in hospital administration.”

In this dynamic healthcare world, Buckwalter knows he needs to keep working to better this time-sensitive scheme.  He is researching ways to spend less time shutting down and starting up helicopters and employing tracking devices for flights, and is no longer waiting for a chart to begin working on a patient. To be as quick and fluid as possible, Buckwalter has implemented a plan so that phone calls are limited, lab results are immediately accepted, and all nurses carry a beeper that notifies them when a heart rescue is enroute.

“Once we are notified that a patient has been received at the outside hospital’s ER and will immediately be transported here, we make no other phone calls until the patient has left,” Buckwalter said. “Several studies have shown that the more you pull primary nurses away from the bedside, the longer the patient stays in the other facility’s ER. If nurses spend five or 10 minutes going back and forth on the phone, that’s five or 10 minutes that could have been spent preparing the patient for transfer.”

“It’s trauma care for the heart,” said Buckwalter. “Everything is rapid and protocol-driven because time is of the essence.”

To learn more about the Pennsylvania Presbyterian Medical Center, visit http://www.pennhealth.com/presby/

For more information about the RN to BSN program, call or e-mail Kim Skinner at 610.225.5525, 1.800.732.7669 ext. 5525 or kskinner@eastern.edu. For more information about the Fast-Track MBA in Health Administration program, call 1.800.732.7669 or e-mail gpsadm@eastern.edu.

The Campolo College of Graduate and Professional Studies at Eastern University offers a broad range of adult, undergraduate and graduate programs from community education to associate’s degrees to its newest Ph.D. in Organizational Leadership. Areas of instruction include business, counseling psychology, education, health administration, leadership, nonprofit management, nursing and urban/international economic development. For more information call 1.800.732.7669, e-mail gpsadm@eastern.edu or visit www.eastern.edu/.

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