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News release: Colorado - Denver/BoulderFebruary 2, 2004 For more information, call: Mayor congratulates Kaiser Permanente for making life-saving gift to metro Denver Health care organization donates more than $150,000 to provide metro Denver's Fire Protection Houses with automatic external defibrillators Denver, CO – Mayor John Hickenlooper congratulated Kaiser Permanente for the health care organization's contribution of $156,000 to the American Heart Association to equip the City's fire protection agencies with automatic external defibrillators (AED) units during a press event on Feb. 2, at Denver Fire Station One. With this contribution, and funding support from the American Heart Association and other community organizations, the seven-county area now will be at 100% defibrillator deployment. In addition, the American Heart Association presented Becki Ball, a flight attendant with United Airlines, with its Heartsaver Award for acting swiftly and using an AED at Denver International Airport to save the life of a traveler. The AEDs analyze the heart rhythm and automatically indicate when to administer an electric shock. "We know minutes can save lives," said Michael Leonard, MD, chief of Kaiser Permanente's patient safety program in Colorado. "A firefighter having access to an AED is like a doctor having access to a stethoscope. Technology now allows us to do all we can to help a patient needing critical care. This partnership truly benefits the entire community." The Kaiser Permanente gift allows the American Heart Association to fulfill its AED priority list for first responders. It follows a previous gift that placed 24 AEDs at DIA, the Denver Center for the Performing Arts and the State Capitol. As many as 250,000 Americans die each year of cardiac arrest, mostly when their hearts start to beat chaotically. Automatic defibrillators are designed to recognize the chaotic beating and deliver a shock to bring the heart back into a normal rhythm. "Immediate defibrillation can result in greater than 70 percent survival," said David Fending, EMS educator with Colorado Advanced Life Support and American Heart Association volunteer. "With each minute of delay in defibrillation, nearly 10 percent fewer people survive. With as little as a 10-minute delay, the chance to survive is small." On Oct. 7, 2003 Becki Ball, a flight attendant for United Airlines was on her way to her assigned flight in proximity to Gate B-47 when she noticed a large group of people gathered around the moving walkway. She saw a female laying on the walkway and jumped over the rail and instructed onlookers to move back. She told a man to get the AED. By the time he returned with the AED, Ball had assessed that the woman had no pulse and was not breathing. She immediately attached the AED to the woman and followed the computer instructions to administer a shock. Ball does not recall exactly how many times she shocked the woman, but seemed to remember "at least five, maybe seven times." Finally the AED prompted "no shock advised, check airway, check breathing, check pulse." Denver Paramedics (DIA) arrived shortly after this and transported the woman to the hospital. Kaiser Permanente is a nonprofit health plan that cares for more than 400,000 members in the six-county Denver metro area and in Colorado Springs. Its scores for clinical effectiveness placed it among the top 15 health plans in the nation, according to the National Committee for Quality Assurance's annual Health Care Quality Report. In the Denver metro area, care is provided by a coordinated team that includes physicians, nurses, pharmacists, dietitians, mental health counselors, and physical therapists. In the Colorado Springs area, Kaiser Permanente cares for its members through an affiliated network of community-based physicians and other health care providers. Since 1924 the American Heart Association has helped protect people of all ages and ethnicities from the ravages of heart disease and stroke. These diseases, the nation's No. 1 and No. 3 killers, claim more than 930,000 American lives a year. The association invested more than $348 million in fiscal year 2002-03 for research, professional and public education, and advocacy so people across America can live stronger, longer lives.
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