Rounds Preview: Excelling in Cardiac Care 

This article appears in the June 2012 issue of HealthLeaders magazine.

Editor's note: This piece is an excerpt of a fuller case study that is part of an upcoming Rounds Event, Excellence in Cardiac Care: Elements of Success From The Mount Sinai Hospital. To see the complete case study, which includes additional lessons and more information, visit www.healthleadersmedia.com/rounds/.

The interventional cardiology program at The Mount Sinai Hospital consistently ranks as a top—if not the top—program in New York City in terms of volume and lowest complications. Samin K. Sharma, MD, director of clinical cardiology and president of The Mount Sinai Heart Network, says the reasons are quite simple.

Leadership and teaching, adherence to a strict set of protocols, and communication all form the basis of the program's success in the city's fiercely competitive heart market. Even something as seemingly small as making sure there is a senior interventionalist on the floor can pay big dividends in quality. In 2008, the program at Mount Sinai performed 4,577 percutaneous cardiac interventions, with a risk-adjusted 30-day mortality rate of 0.62 for all cases.

"There are five of us interventionalists who are the backbone of this program at Mount Sinai," Sharma says. "One of us always stays until the lab is done. It could be midnight, could be 2:00 a.m., but we stay all night to help these other interventionalists to get a good outcome."