When Owen Shaw Jr. made an unexpected visit to Northeast Georgia Medical Center’s Ronnie Green Heart Center in April, he wasn’t thinking about accreditations or how the hospital currently holds a world distinction. He was thinking about living.

In April, Shaw had a heart attack while at work. His co-workers used a portable defibrillator on him and he was transported to Northeast Georgia.

He was told it was “the worst kind of heart attack you could have,” with one of his arteries completely blocked.

Doctors at the medical center put in a stent and, three weeks later, Shaw was back at work.

“I don’t think my family could have taken any better care of me,” he said of the treatment. “And my family is in medical.”

Shaw isn’t the only one who has taken note of the center.

Accreditation for Cardiovascular Excellence has fully accredited the center for carotid artery stenting and percutaneous coronary interventions.

The center is the first in the world to receive two accreditations from ACE.

“This is a huge deal,” said Shaw of the accreditations. “The only thing I can tell you is they’re great.”

ACE is an accreditation body that looks at cardiology programs throughout the world and evaluates the facilities to ensure quality and improvement.

It was started by The Society for Cardiac Angiography and Interventions and the American College of Cardiology.

“We’re demonstrating that we continue to lead whenever it comes to quality,” said Dr. J. Jeffrey Marshall, an interventional cardiologist and medical director of the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory at the medical center, as well as president of SCAI. “If you want quality care, you’re going to get it at our hospital. There’s nobody else in Georgia that has this, and we believe that quality is the most important thing, so we went after this accreditation.”

A team of independent practitioners from ACE spent three days at the medical center looking at services, quality control, charts, processes and outcomes.

“It’s a pretty rigorous process that (centers) have to go through and meet,” said Mary Heisler, ACE executive director.

She said it’s the first of its kind when it comes to reviewing invasive coronary procedures.

The process also gives the program’s directors an idea of where they’re succeeding and where they can improve.

“You have a third party coming in and viewing you with unbiased eyes, saying: ‘This is good, this is good, you can tune this up a little bit,’” said Tom Edwards, director of heart and vascular services at the medical center.

“That was really kind of the outcome of our survey on both the coronary and carotid side.”

Edwards said the accreditation team looked at “every single aspect of what (they) do in the cath lab” and the program has benefited from having “a fresh pair of eyes.”

The medical center opted into both accreditation processes.

The accreditation for percutaneous coronary interventions includes angioplasty and the placement of stents — the two most common treatments for heart attack patients. The carotid artery stenting accreditation applies specifically to a procedure that widens narrowed portions of a patient’s neck arteries to improve or restore blood flow to the brain.

“Just to have someone volunteer to undergo this kind of rigorous review says a lot about the confidence they have in their program and what they’re doing there,” said Heisler.

Marshall hopes more Georgia hospitals will follow the medical center’s lead.

“It’s one of those things that will hopefully attract patients and let patients know that we are doing the best that we can and that we are one of the best in the world,” he said. “And we’d also like to see other hospitals in Georgia do these kinds of things.”

And Shaw can see why the center received the distinction.

“You knew, without a doubt, that you were in good hands,” he said.