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Published on October 22, 2024

10 Years in a Row, Local EMS Agency Receives National Honors

For the tenth consecutive year, MyMichigan Medical Center EMS in Midland and Gladwin, in collaboration with MyMichigan’s Regional STEMI Alert Program partners, have received the American Heart Association’s Mission: Lifeline® EMS Gold Award. The prestigious award recognizes organizations for their commitment to offering rapid and research-based care to people experiencing the most severe form of heart attacks and strokes, ultimately saving lives.

Mission: Lifeline EMS® is the American Heart Association's national initiative to advance the system of care for patients with high-risk, time-sensitive disease states, such as severe heart attacks and strokes. The program helps reduce barriers to prompt treatment — starting from when 911 is called, to EMS transport and continuing through hospital treatment and discharge. Optimal care for heart attack and stroke patients takes coordination between the individual pre-hospital providers and healthcare systems.

“To receive this honor by the American Heart Association for 10 years in a row now is one to which we are all very proud. The Mission: Lifeline program puts proven knowledge and guidelines to work on a daily basis, so patients have the best possible chance of survival and we stand behind it,” said John Clayton, system director of EMS, MyMichigan Health. “Our communities can rest assured that we are committed and here in an emergency to provide the highest level of care should they need us.”

MyMichigan was also recognized on the AHA’s Mission: Lifeline® EMS Gold Target: Heart Attack Honor Roll. This award highlights the collaboration and contributions of both pre-hospital and hospital providers. This time-critical award level is limited to those agencies that provide patient transport to STEMI-receiving and STEMI-referring centers.

MyMichigan Health’s Regional STEMI Alert Program was designed to train paramedics on how to quickly identify STEMI patients so that they can implement life-saving protocols to bypass the closest Emergency Department and take the patient to the nearest Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI) Center. The program is approved for up to a 90-minute patient transport time to MyMichigan Medical Center Midland, the nearest PCI Center. To ensure overall success of the program, MyMichigan Medical Center EMS actively collaborates with other local EMS agencies to provide training and share best practices. These partner EMS agencies include Denton Township EMS, Houghton Lake EMS, Ogemaw County EMS and MMR-West. A regional STEMI Alert Program and PCI intervention program was also established in northeast Michigan with MyMichigan Medical Center EMS and MyMichigan Medical Center Alpena in 2023.

Those who would like more information on MyMichigan’s Regional STEMI Alert Program may visit www.mymichigan.org/stemi.

About Mission: Lifeline

Mission: Lifeline EMS® recognition is the American Heart Association’s program that recognizes prehospital emergency agencies for their quality of care for heart attack and stroke patients. The recognition program focuses on transforming care quality by connecting all heart attack and stroke care components into a seamlessly integrated care system. Key tenets of these systems of care reinforce evidence-based guidelines and measure performance, identify gaps, and engage in quality improvement. www.heart.org.