American Heart Association Award Recognizes Baptist and Gulf Breeze Hospitals for Commitment to Quality Stroke Care
11/30/2020
Gulf Breeze Hospital has received the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines® — Stroke Gold Plus Award, and Baptist Hospital earned the Silver Plus Quality Achievement Award. These awards recognize Baptist Health Care’s commitment to ensuring stroke patients receive the most appropriate treatment according to nationally recognized, research-based guidelines based on the latest scientific evidence.
Baptist and Gulf Breeze hospitals earned the awards by meeting specific quality achievement measures for the diagnosis and treatment of stroke patients at a set level for a designated period. These measures include evaluation of the proper use of medications and other stroke treatments aligned with the most up-to-date, evidence-based guidelines with the goal of speeding recovery and reducing death and disability for stroke patients. Before discharge, patients should also receive education on managing their health, schedule a follow-up visit, as well as receive other care transition interventions.
Baptist Hospital additionally received the Association’s Target: Stroke Honor Roll Elite, Target: Stroke Advanced Therapy Honor Roll, and Target: Type 2 Diabetes Honor Roll award. To qualify for this recognition, hospitals must meet quality measures developed to reduce the time between the patient’s arrival at the hospital and treatment with the clot-buster tissue plasminogen activator, or tPA, the only drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat ischemic stroke. For those hospitals measuring Door-To-Device (DTD) times in at least 50% of applicable patients within 90 minutes for direct arriving and within 60 minutes for transfer, they qualified for the Target: Stroke Honor Roll Advanced Therapy designation.
“Baptist Health Care is dedicated to improving the quality of care for our stroke patients by implementing the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines — Stroke initiative in our hospitals,” said Cynde Gamache, DBA, M.A., R.N., NEA-BC, vice president and chief nursing officer, Baptist Health Care. “The tools and resources provided help us track and measure our success in meeting evidenced-based clinical guidelines developed to improve patient outcomes.”
“We are pleased to recognize Baptist and Gulf Breeze hospitals for their commitment to stroke care,” said Lee H. Schwamm, M.D., national chairperson of the Quality Oversight Committee and executive vice chair of neurology, director of acute stroke services, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. “Research has shown that hospitals adhering to clinical measures through the Get With The Guidelines quality improvement initiative can often see fewer readmissions and lower mortality rates.”
According to the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, stroke is the No. 5 cause of death and a leading cause of adult disability in the United States. On average, someone in the U.S. suffers a stroke every 40 seconds, and nearly 795,000 people suffer a new or recurrent stroke each year.