Some celebrated Valentine’s Day with heart-shaped candy, others with heart-felt messages. Palomar Health celebrated by installing heart-saving devices. More than 475,000 Americans die from cardiac arrest each year but according to the American Heart Association, the single most important action to improve cardiac arrest survival is “timely and effective CPR.” Survival rates increase even more when CPR is combined with a defibrillator. With this in mind, Palomar Health invested $1.6 million to purchase 75 top-of-the-line Zoll R Series Defibrillator and One-Step Systems to replace older models and upgrade 30 existing systems at Palomar Medical Center Escondido and Poway. In the last month, instructors trained 2,500 clinicians to use the new equipment and on Feb. 13 and 14, replaced the old equipment with the new on transportable “crash carts” that are rolled into patient rooms by rapid response teams when ...