Unprecedented speed in heart attack treatment achieved by HCA Florida Northside Hospital
St. Petersburg, Fla. — When Pinellas County resident Eugene ‘Gene’ Noble had a massive heart attack this year, he didn’t think he would survive. He had just finished a game of tennis and promptly collapsed. But thanks to eagle eye landscapers who called 9-1-1, quick thinking paramedics who alerted the hospital to an active heart attack patient coming in, and the well-oiled machine at HCA Florida Northside Hospital Emergency Room (ER), Noble, who was revived five times, is still here today.
“I remember telling him on the ambulance, 'I'm not gonna make it.' I didn't think I was gonna make it,” he said.
Based on the most recent information from EMS ambulance runs across Pinellas County, Northside Hospital received more active heart attack patients (STEMI alerts) than any other facility in the county in March 2025. And, according to data reported to the American College of Cardiology, the hospital’s response time is one of the fastest, if not the fastest in the state.
The national recommended response time for a STEMI is 90 minutes. For Noble, it was just 11 minutes. In about the same amount of time it takes to make breakfast, paramedics brought him in and physicians completed a cardiac catherization (cath) procedure that saved his life.
"We took him directly to the cath lab to open his blood vessel. He didn't lose blood pressure and gained consciousness immediately,” said Dr. Abdul Jabbar, the cardiologist who treated Noble at Northside Hospital.
Communication and collaboration play a primary role in the STEMI program’s success at Northside Hospital. Paramedics had started an IV in the field and performed an EEG/EKG, with results they shared with the ER prior to arrival. A charge nurse read the results and seeing the severity of the STEMI, immediately called an alert bringing a cardiac team to the ER and activating a full setup in the cath lab.
"Saving someone's life is something invaluable,” says Dr. Jabbar.
Noble went from near death to feeling better than he had in years by the very next day. "It was like it never happened," he said.
HCA Florida Northside Hospital was ranked a Top 10% Hospital for Critical Care and Top 250 Hospital in the country by Healthgrades, with several awards and recognition for its cardiac program.
Find out more about the program and to find a cardiologist.