The American Heart Association (AHA) is set to transform the way hospitals build and maintain staff competency for critical skills like CPR. More than 200,000 cardiac arrests occur in U.S. hospitals annually and fewer than 24 percent of patients survive. To tackle this problem, the AHA and Laerdal Medical, a manufacturer of medical equipment, have pledged to reduce 50,000 preventable cardiac arrest deaths per year by 2020.

Health systems such as Texas Health Resources, UT Southwestern, Baylor Medical Center and Methodist Health System are using the AHA resuscitation quality improvement (RQI) program to save more lives in our community.

AHA launched the RQI initiative in 2014, which has been adopted in 400 hospitals across the country. The program replaces the every-two-year classroom-style approach to CPR training with low-dose, high-frequency training  comprising 10 minutes every 90 days on responsive mannequins.