8 Quality improvement measures to reduce the time to ECG in patients self-presenting with chest pain

BackgroundThe European Society of Cardiology recommends a benchmark door-to-electrocardiogram (ECG) time of 10 minutes for patients self-presenting to the emergency department (ED) with chest pain. We investigated whether modifying ED triage processes could improve door-to-ECG time after the implementation of Quality improvement (QI) strategies.MethodologyThis was a QI project with a pre-post study design using our hospital database during February to April 2022 (Pre-intervention) and March – April 2023 (Post-intervention). QI strategies implemented in our ED included: (1) setting up an ECG room in the triage area, (2) recruiting a dedicated ECG technician for ED, (3) fast-tracking patients with chest pain to the ECG technician and (4) training healthcare assistants to perform ECG. The primary outcome was the percentage of patients with chest pain who received ECG within 10 min of arrival; the secondary outcome was the percentage of patients with triage times of