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Caritas St. Elizabeth's Medical Center (CSEMC) is among three Caritas Christi Health Care system hospitals and only 18 statewide to receive the High Reliability Cardiac Care Award from MassPRO, considered one of the leading healthcare performance improvement organizations in the United States. CSEMC received the High Reliability Cardiac Care Award because the hospital "has demonstrated 100 percent reliability in a clinical topic area (Acute Myocardial Infarction or heart attack) for two of the three publicly reported quarters on Hospital Compare." Hospital Compare is a hospital quality reporting Web site operated by the US Department of Health and Human Services that provides consumers and health care professionals with information on how well hospitals care for their adult patients who have certain medical conditions. Participating hospitals submit information to Hospital Compare voluntarily. CSEMC is also the recipient of the Collaboration Sharing Award which acknowledges hospitals that assisted in the spread of performance improvement systems by providing and sharing their experience at MassPRO Quality Improvement events between March 2004 and March 2006. In addition to CSEMC's awards, the Caritas Christi Health Care system received six awards in total from MassPRO - Caritas Holy Family Hospital and Medical Center and Caritas Carney Hospital are both recipients of the High Reliability Cardiac Care Award and the Participation Award which honors hospitals that attended collaborative workshops and have demonstrated commitment to quality improvement in specific clinical areas including Heart Attack Heart Failure, Pneumonia, and Surgical Care Improvement. "Caritas St. Elizabeth's mission is to provide our patients with state-of-the-art, compassionate care," said Dr. Michael Kneeland, vice president of medical affairs, CSEMC. "These awards from MassPRO highlight our ongoing commitment to treat our heart attack and heart failure patients with the best medical practices available." Since January of 2004 to present, CSEMC was acknowledged for its overall compliance with all the best practice strategies to treat a heart attack patient. The strategies include giving the patient aspirin, beta-blocker, and ACEI inhibitors when appropriate. Additionally, those patients who had history of smoking were given counseling materials to support a non-smoking life style to better their chances for a good outcome after their heart attack. Another highly effective measure to ensure best possible care for CSEMC and all heart attack patients requires the coordination of the cardiac catheterization and emergency department teams who successfully transfer a patient from the emergency department to the cardiac cath lab expeditiously following positive findings on the patient's electrocardiogram. In quarter four of 2005, 100 percent of CSEMC patients had a catheterization procedure completed within 90 minutes of arrival to the emergency department, which is considered optimal standard of care. The average time-to-procedure for that same time period was 58.8 minutes. Founded by the Massachusetts Medical Society, which publishes the New England Journal of Medicine, MassPRO is dedicated to advancing healthcare quality and to transforming healthcare through developing and disseminating innovative solutions across all sectors of the healthcare delivery system. Caritas St. Elizabeth's Medical Center is a major academic medical center affiliated with Tufts University School of Medicine. Areas of medical excellence include cardiology and cardiovascular research, neurosciences, women's health, high-risk obstetrics, bone and joint health, hematology/oncology, pulmonary medicine and gastroenterology. Caritas St. Elizabeth's is a member of Caritas Christi Health Care, the second largest health care system in New England.