St. Vincent’s Medical Center Riverside receives Stroke Silver Quality Achievevement Award | Health

St. Vincent’s Medical Center Riverside received the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines®–Stroke Silver Quality Achievement Award at the association’s 2012 International Stroke Conference. The award recognizes the hospital’s commitment and success in implementing a high standard of care by ensuring stroke patients receive the most appropriate treatment according to nationally recognized, evidence-based guidelines.

St. Vincent’s Medical Center Riverside is one of 56 hospitals to be recognized for the Silver Award, among the 677 total hospitals to be given quality achievement awards at the conference.  To receive the Silver Quality Achievement award, hospitals must achieve 85 percent or higher adherence to all Get With The Guidelines–Stroke achievement indicators for at least 12 consecutive months. Achievement indicators are reporting initiatives to measure quality of care.

These measures are evidence-based treatments known to result in improved patient outcomes. They focus on appropriate use of guideline-based care for stroke patients, including aggressive use of medications such as clot-busting and anti-clotting drugs, blood thinners and cholesterol-reducing drugs, preventive action for deep vein thrombosis and smoking cessation counseling.

“With a stroke, time lost equals brain loss. This award demonstrates our commitment to providing aggressive, high standard care for the patients we treat,” said Cynthia Hailey-Letterman, System Neuroscience Coordinator for St. Vincent’s HealthCare. 

In addition to the Get With The Guideline-Stroke award, St. Vincent’s Medical Center Riverside, has also been recognized as a recipient of the association’s Target: Stroke Honor Roll, for improving stroke care. 

St. Vincent’s Medical Center Riverside has developed a Primary Stroke Center, featuring a comprehensive system for rapid diagnosis and treatment of stroke patients admitted to the emergency department. As a result, the staff is prepared to provide brain imaging scans quickly and neurologists are on hand to evaluate those scans and use clot-busting medications when appropriate.  

“St. Vincent’s Medical Center Riverside’s Get With The Guidelines–Stroke recognition is a tribute to the commitment of their staff and healthcare professionals to ensure quality patient care, using all the available evidence, guidelines and tools,” said Lee H. Schwamm, M.D., chair of the Get With The Guidelines National Steering Committee. “Published scientific studies are providing us with more and more evidence that Get With The Guidelines works. Patients are getting the right care they need when they need it. That’s resulting in improved survival after a stroke diagnosis.”      \

According to the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, stroke is one of the leading causes of death and serious, long-term disability in the United States. On average, someone suffers a stroke every 40 seconds and 795,000 people suffer a new or recurrent stroke each year.