Cardiovascular service line leaders are under pressure to do more with less — expand access, reduce diagnostic delays, and improve outcomes while navigating tight budgets and operational complexity. Few people understand this challenge as well as Amanda Maples. After starting her career as a registered nurse (RN) and later developing cardiovascular programs as a service line director, Maples now serves as senior manager of customer experience at iRhythm Technologies. She brings a rare end‑to‑end perspective on how clinical, operational, and strategic decisions intersect. In this Q&A, she shares practical insights on building patient‑centered cardiovascular programs and why cardiac monitoring is often an underutilized lever for improving both performance and care quality.
Q: Can you tell us about your background and what drew you into cardiovascular program development?
A: My journey into healthcare started early. As a child, I had asthma and rheumatic fever, so I spent a lot of time in hospitals. I was cared for by incredible teams, and I became very aware of how much the patient experience — and how you’re made to feel as a patient — matters.
When I became a nurse, working in the emergency department (ED) and in primary care, I was always thinking about the patient journey. That patient‑focused mindset stayed with me. As a chest pain coordinator working with Joint Commission standards, I learned how quality metrics and outcomes affect both health systems and the people they serve. I saw firsthand what building good foundational programs can do for patients, clinicians, and the organization as a whole.
I eventually moved into strategic and clinical program development as a cardiovascular service line leader, working closely with physicians to better understand the patient journey end to end.
Q: Cardiovascular patients often face long diagnostic journeys. What role do you see service line leaders playing in reducing that time to diagnosis?
A: When you look at the metrics and see long waits, the first question should be why. Cardiovascular care touches a large portion of the population, so it’s easy for cardiac services to become a catch-all, and diagnostic tools can quickly get backed up.
As a service line leader, you need to understand not just where patients enter the system, but how they get diagnosed and directed to the right level of care. That applies whether they’re coming through the ED or through primary care.
We often focus on the newest, biggest technologies — the latest surgical robot or advanced mapping system. But it’s easy to overlook the foundational diagnostic tools that help guide patients to the right place at the right time. Those tools can have an outsized impact on access and outcomes.
Q: You were involved in building a women’s cardiovascular program that became a model for early detection and education. Can you tell us about that program and what gaps you were trying to address?
A: This is a huge passion of mine. I was involved with the American Heart Association for several years, and the statistics around women and cardiovascular disease are still alarming to me. It’s the number one cause of death for women in the US.1
I worked for a health system that consistently ranked first in the state for the number of births delivered, and we saw the impact of maternal cardiovascular risk firsthand. Maternal mortality was very real.
We asked ourselves how we could ensure that when a woman entered our health system — no matter where she entered — she had access to appropriate screening and guideline-based care. That included looking at conditions like preeclampsia, structural heart disease, and arrhythmias.
When it comes to cardiovascular disease, women present differently than men.2 They have more microvascular disease,3 and different heart attack symptoms.2 And with arrhythmias, many women don’t recognize what they’re feeling.4 They may attribute palpitations to stress or fatigue to being busy moms. Having access to continuous cardiac monitoring was invaluable because it allowed us to detect issues without relying solely on symptom recognition.
Education was also a major part of the program — helping women understand cardiovascular disease and feel empowered to advocate for their own health.
Q: Let’s talk about the ED and how you reduced “frequent flyers” coming in for AFib and palpitations.
A: AFib, palpitations, and syncope are very common reasons patients come to the ED. Typical ED protocols are designed to rule out acute events like heart attacks, but arrhythmias can be more challenging because symptoms are often intermittent and hard to describe.5 Someone comes in “not feeling right,” but not able to describe exactly why.
If symptoms aren’t clearly identified, patients might receive basic testing and be discharged. But then they return when symptoms happen again. Creating care pathways for those vague or hard-to-describe symptoms is critical. Sometimes that means simply asking them additional questions. Do you feel like you’re going to pass out? Does it feel like a butterfly is in your chest? Do you feel overly anxious? Are you dizzy?
You can discharge patients and send them home with a long-term continuous cardiac monitor, like a Zio® monitor6, and that patient can confidently wear that device to record what’s happening with their heartbeat. When they follow up with cardiology, they can get a clearer answer about whether there’s a cardiac cause for their symptoms. That approach reduces uncertainty for patients and helps prevent unnecessary repeat visits.
Q: How do you approach minimizing staff burden when implementing a new program?
A: What I love about the team I work with at iRhythm is that we’re all nurses, operational leaders, or practice managers. We’ve lived inside health systems, and we understand what it means to be asked to do more with less.
When we think about implementing a program, we look at the full end-to-end workflow — how a patient gets registered, how the device is placed, how data flows, and what happens after monitoring is complete. We think about where staff are spending time, where friction exists, and what could make their day easier instead of harder.
Simplicity matters. The device needs to be easy to place, comfortable for patients to wear, and supported by clear, repeatable processes. When staff don’t have to troubleshoot or reinvent the workflow, burden is reduced naturally.
Q: For service line leaders who want to make their data more actionable — not just collect it — what’s your advice?
A: I always say you have to start with your baseline. Look at your volumes, outcomes, access, and demographics. When I was in cardiovascular service line leadership, I worked closely with vendor partners to understand how cardiac monitoring was being used across our system. We surveyed providers to learn what tools they were using, why they were using them, and what they were looking for. What we uncovered was a lack of standard processes.
From there, I partnered with physician leaders to standardize so patients had more consistent access to monitoring and providers had more reliable data. Once we did that, we started to see patients getting diagnosed faster and programs growing more intentionally.
The data became incredibly valuable for decision-making. My advice is to treat data as a strategic asset. Evaluate it quarterly, and use it to guide how to grow your programs.
Amanda Maples is senior manager of customer experience at iRhythm Technologies.
About Amanda Maples, RN, BSN, MHA
She began her healthcare career as a nurse in emergency and primary care settings, then advanced into cardiovascular service line leadership, where she led strategy and operations to strengthen cardiovascular programs and improve patient outcomes. Her work included building comprehensive cardiovascular services and developing a pioneering women’s cardiovascular health program. Amanda has also been actively involved with the American Heart Association, supporting women’s cardiovascular disease education and advocacy. She brings to her current role a unique combination of clinical expertise, operational leadership, and a deep commitment to patient-centered care.
1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About Women and Heart Disease. CDC; 2024. https://www.cdc.gov/heart-disease/about/women-and-heart-disease.html. Accessed January 12, 2026.
2. Johns Hopkins Medicine. Heart disease: differences in men and women. Johns Hopkins Medicine; 2024. www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/heart-disease-differences-in-men-and-women. Accessed January 12, 2026.
3. American Heart Association. Coronary microvascular disease (MVD). American Heart Association; 2024. www.heart.org/en/health-topics/heart-attack/angina-chest-pain/coronary-microvascular-disease-mvd. Accessed January 12, 2026.
4. Wilson RE, et al. Gender and the Symptom Experience before an Atrial Fibrillation Diagnosis. West J Nurs Res. 2021;43(12):1093-1104. doi:10.1177/0193945921999448
5. Battisti AJ, et al. Relationship of symptom frequency and symptom-rhythm correlation to arrhythmia type and time to detection: Insights from ambulatory electrocardiogram monitoring in over 1 million patients. Heart Rhythm. Published online November 7, 2025. doi:10.1016/j.hrthm.2025.11.007
6. The Zio monitor is a prescription-only, single-use ECG monitor. For complete product information, including indications for use and important safety information, refer to the Instructions for Use available at: https://www.irhythmtech.com/us/en/solutions-services/instructions-for-use
iRhythm, Zio, Zio XT, Zio AT, MyZio, and ZioSuite are trademarks of iRhythm Technologies, Inc. © 2026. All rights reserved. MKT2322.01
The post Why Cardiac Monitoring Belongs at the Foundation of Your Service Line Strategy: A Conversation with Amanda Maples, RN, BSN, MHA appeared first on Becker's Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.
