“Our mission is to advance health in our community by providing safe, high quality care,” said Greg Haralson, Sr. Vice President, CEO, Memorial Hermann Sugar Land. “Being recognized by the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association tells us that we’re on the right path toward meeting that goal.”
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.
“Getting this recognition is a testimonial to the hard work we put in on a daily basis for our patients right from the emergency department to the stroke floor,” says Dr. M. Faisal Khan, MD, D, ABSM, director, Neuroscience Program, Memorial Hermann Sugar Land. “Stroke patients coming to Memorial Hermann Sugar Land can rest assured that they will get the very best care.”
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 pleased to recognize Memorial Hermann Sugar Land for their commitment to stroke care,” said Deepak L. Bhatt, MD, MPH., national chairman of the Get With The Guidelines steering committee and Executive Director of Interventional Cardiovascular Programs at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and 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.”
For providers, Get With The Guidelines-Stroke offers quality-improvement measures, discharge protocols, standing orders and other measurement tools. Providing hospitals with resources and information that make it easier to follow treatment guidelines can help save lives and ultimately reduce overall healthcare costs by lowering readmission rates for stroke patients.
For patients, Get With The Guidelines–Stroke uses the “teachable moment,” the time soon after a patient has had a stroke, when they learn how to manage their risk factors while still in the hospital and recognize the F.A.S.T. warning signs of a stroke.
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.