2024: A milestone year for cardiac care Your gifts brought life-saving cardiac care close to home

Thanks to gifts from our donors, we invested in the latest imaging and catheterization equipment to build out our second cardiac catheterization suite. In June, we earned state licensing and certification to offer percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), a life-saving, non-surgical procedure that opens blockages and restores blood flow to the heart. This means that most people experiencing a heart attack in the Mother Lode can now receive immediate treatment here at home instead of having their care delayed by an hour or more to be transported to the next closest facility that can perform this procedure.

And every minute counts when it comes to a heart attack because, as our clinicians say, time is muscle. Every minute the heart goes without oxygen causes more tissue death, which means a more challenging road to recovery, if the patient survives.

That’s why we’ve invested in not only the tools and highly trained physicians and staff to perform PCI, but also the resources beyond our walls to provide this care as quickly as possible when emergency strikes.

This spring, we earned additional certification to become a STEMI receiving center, which automatically directs all ambulance traffic in the region to bring heart attack patients to our hospital for care. And with the support of our greatest need fund, we purchased modems to outfit local ambulances operated by Tuolumne County Ambulance Service.

Equipped with this technology, first responders can transmit electrocardiograms (EKGs) taken in the field directly to our emergency department if they suspect a patient is experiencing a heart attack. If a physician confirms a heart attack upon reading the EKG, we can activate the cardiac catheterization lab team before the patient even arrives at the hospital and provide even faster treatment when it matters most.