Dixie Regional receives Stroke Gold Award
Dixie Regional Medical Center recently received the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Gold 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 Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award, hospitals must achieve 85 percent or higher adherence to all Get With The Guidelines-Stroke achievement indicators for two or more consecutive 12-month periods and achieved 75 percent or higher compliance with five of eight Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Quality measures.
“We are pleased to recognize Dixie Regional Medical Center for their commitment to stroke care,” said Deepak L. Bhatt, 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 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 B-E-F-A-S-T warning signs of a stroke, which are:
• B – Balance – sudden loss of balance or coordination
• E – Eyes – sudden change in vision
• F – Face – sudden weakness of the face
• A – Arms – sudden weakness of an arm or leg
• S – Speech – sudden difficulty speaking
• T – Time – note the time the symptoms started
In stroke patients, time is brain. During a stroke, 32,000 brain cells die every second, so every second counts to help prevent brain damage.
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 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.
For information go to heart.org/quality or heart.org/QualityMap.
Related stories
Area hospitals score high on list
DRMC named among hospitals with lowest readmission rates in US