Cabinet Peaks Medical Center on Sept. 21 was awarded the Montana Rural Healthcare Performance Improvement Network’s Quality Improvement Award.

The network is a voluntary membership of 48 critical-access hospitals statewide that lets members benchmark their performance with one another on various measures “that encourage safe, effective, patient-centered care delivery in even the most remote communities of the state,” a news release states.

To receive the award, the Medical Center met several criteria, including improvement in chest pain treatment times for which it “is being especially recognized.”

According to the news release, standards for this criteria require hospitals to perform an EKG within 10 minutes “for all patients presenting with chest pain and subsequently being transferred to an urban facility for higher level of care.”

The Medical Center’s median time to EKG equals the national average of 7 minutes and is better than the 10-minute average for the state of Montana.