Franciscan St. Anthony Health-Michigan City Receives Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Silver Plus Quality Achievement Award

franciscan-stroke-treatment-honor-2015Franciscan St. Anthony Health-Michigan City has received the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Silver Plus Quality Achievement Award.

The award recognizes the hospital’s commitment and success in ensuring stroke patients receive the most appropriate treatment, according to nationally recognized, research-based guidelines based on the latest scientific evidence.

To receive the Silver Plus 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 and during the same period achieve 75 percent or higher compliance with five of eight Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Quality measures.

These quality measures are designed to help hospital teams provide the most up-to-date, evidence-based guidelines with the goal of speeding recovery and reducing death and disability for stroke patients. 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.

“We are very proud to be recognized by the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association as a Silver Plus Quality Achievement Award recipient. This award demonstrates the ongoing dedication and success of our team, who ensure that our patients experiencing strokes receive the most appropriate treatment. This demonstrates our commitment to providing quality care for those we serve, as we strive to improve the health of our community,” said Trish Weber, hospital vice president of operations and chief nursing officer.

“We are pleased to recognize Franciscan St. Anthony Health for its commitment to stroke care,” said Deepak L. Bhatt, MD, national chairman of the Get With The Guidelines steering committee and executive director of Interventional Cardiovascular programs at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “Studies have shown that hospitals that consistently follow Get With The Guidelines quality improvement measures can reduce length of stay and 30-day readmission rates and reduce disparities in care.”

According to the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, stroke is the number-five cause of death and a leading cause of adult disability in the United States. On average, someone suffers a stroke every 40 seconds; someone dies of a stroke every four minutes; and 795,000 people suffer a new or recurrent stroke each year.