In 2013, the general assembly enacted SB 13-225, which established a task force in the department of public health and environment (department) to study and make recommendations for developing a statewide plan to improve quality of care to STEMI heart attack patients. ("STEMI" is an acronym for ST-elevation myocardial infarctions.) The study was to explore, among other things, the creation

of a database for collecting data on STEMI care and access to aggregated STEMI data from the database for purposes of improving STEMI heart attack care.

The bill implements the following recommendations of the task force, with some modifications:

• Requires hospitals that are recognized as heart attack receiving centers to report to a specified national heart attack database data that is consistent with nationally recognized guidelines on individuals with confirmed heart attacks within the state;
• Upon receipt of quarterly reports from the heart attack database, requires hospitals to submit those reports to the department for Colorado-specific data analysis;
• Establishes a heart attack advisory committee in the department to provide general technical expertise on matters related to heart attack care and data analysis; and
• Allows the department to share blinded data from the database with the heart attack advisory committee.