Torrance Memorial Medical Center has 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 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.
“More than anything, winning this award represents the consistency
with which our program works every day collaborating with all departments
to give patients the basic care needed to ensure the best possible chance
for recovery,” said Ed Nazareth, RN, stroke coordinator,
Torrance Memorial Stroke Program. “Because time lost is brain lost, we continue working to further
community education about the signs and symptoms of stroke so patients
understand the urgency of rapid treatment. We also continue working to
expand our use of interventional treatments, such as clot-busting drugs
and surgical interventions, to ensure the most advanced care is available
right here in our community.”
Torrance Memorial has met specific scientific guidelines as a Primary Stroke
Center for its rapid diagnosis and treatment of stroke patients.
“We are pleased to recognize Torrance Memorial for their commitment
to stroke care,” said Deepak L. Bhatt, M.D., M.P.H., 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.