St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital First in Houston to Achieve Target: Stroke Honor Roll
St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital (SLEH) is the first in the Greater Houston area to achieve the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association Target: Stroke Honor Roll. Target: Stroke is designed to improve outcomes for ischemic stroke patients by helping hospitals achieve door-to-needle times of 60 minutes or less. SLEH consistently outperforms other area hospitals with an average time of 44 minutes from the ischemic stroke patient’s arrival to the start of the IV treatment.
Additionally, SLEH received the organization’s Get With The Guidelines®–Stroke Silver Quality Achievement Award, which recognizes hospitals’ commitment and success in implementing a higher standard of stroke care by ensuring that stroke patients receive treatment according to nationally accepted standards and recommendations.
“St. Luke’s stroke care team is dedicated to providing the utmost care to our patients. Receiving these recognitions reinforces that SLEH has in place the protocols, clinical decision support and medical team to improve our patients’ outcomes,” said Andrew Meade, Director of Neurosciences at SLEH.
To receive the Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Silver Quality Achievement Award, SLEH consistently complied with the requirements in the Get With The Guidelines–Stroke program for a minimum of one year. These include aggressive use of medications, such as tissue plasminogen activator, antithrombotics, anticoagulation therapy, deep vein thrombosis prophylaxis, cholesterol reducing drugs and smoking cessation. This 12-month evaluation period is the second in an ongoing self-evaluation by the hospital to continually reach the 85 percent compliance level needed to sustain this award.
Meade added, “The American Heart Association/American Stroke Association was impressed by how quickly SLEH achieved Silver Quality status. We are now working toward the Gold Quality status designation.”
“The American Stroke Association commends SLEH for its success in implementing standards of care and protocols,” said Lee H. Schwamm, M.D., chair of the Get With The Guidelines National Steering Committee and director of the TeleStroke and Acute Stroke Services at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. “The full implementation of acute care and secondary prevention recommendations and guidelines is a critical step in saving the lives and improving outcomes of stroke patients.”
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; someone dies of a stroke every four minutes; and 795,000 people suffer a new or recurrent stroke each year.
