ABSTRACT
Acute myocardial infarction (AMI), or heart attack, is a major cause of death in the United States. In this chapter, the authors include comorbidities and neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) that may affect AMI outcomes. AMI mortality and rehospitalization rates are standard quality of care indicators. To improve AMI patient care, the American Heart Association (AHA), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and the American College of Cardiology (ACC) have introduced sets of quality improvement guidelines. Despite these efforts, disparities in health outcomes exist among different population groups and over different geographic areas. Patients admitted to rural hospitals were less likely to receive recommended lifesaving treatments or key quality of care indicators, such as aspirin at discharge, beta-blockers, and thrombolytic therapy. The authors also provide the results from out-of-hospital survival models by hospital location and place of residence.
