31-11-130. Legislative findings.

The General Assembly finds and declares that:

Cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of death in the United States and in Georgia;#

Georgia ranks as the thirty-eighth worst in the nation for numbers of deaths from cardiovascular disease;#

There were 79,901 deaths in Georgia in 2015, and cardiovascular disease (excluding stroke) accounted for 23.6 percent of such deaths;#

Approximately 40 percent of cardiac deaths occur suddenly, the result of a heart attack that is manifested by an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest;#

As of 2016, several states, but notably Arizona and Washington, have designated hospitals that are expert in cardiovascular disease care, much in the way that Georgia has stroke and trauma centers; Arizona and Washington have some of the lowest death rates for patients who have heart attacks, in part due to their designated cardiac centers; and#

Therefore, it is in the best interest of the residents of this state to establish a program to identify emergency cardiac care centers throughout the state to ensure the rapid triage, assessment, treatment, and transport of patients experiencing out-of-hospital cardiac arrest or heart attack or its complications.#