St. Luke’s Medical Center Receives Get With The Guidelines® – Stroke Gold Plus Achievement Award
St. Luke’s Medical Center (SLMC) announced today that it has received the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines®-Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award. The award recognizes St. Luke’s commitment and success in implementing excellent care for stroke patients, according to evidence-based guidelines.
SLMC has been recognized by the American Stroke Association in this category, every year since 2009 ? longer than any other hospital in Houston. The hospital achieved an 85 percent or higher adherence to all Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Quality Achievement indicators for two or more consecutive 12-month intervals, and also achieved 75 percent or higher compliance with six of 10 Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Quality Measures ? the reporting initiatives that measure quality of care.
“We currently practice nine out of 10 of the American Stroke Association’s Stroke Best Practice Strategies,” said Jose Suarez, MD, director of the Neurovascular/Critical Care Program at SLMC. “St. Luke’s has made a concentrated effort for the past 18 months to not just meet, but to exceed many of the targeted measures needed to be recognized, and we’ve been able to do that.”
In addition to the Get With The Guidelines – Stroke award, SLMC was the first facility in Houston to achieve Target: Stroke designation in 2011 and has maintained the designation since.
St. Luke’s reached a 76 percent score in its care of Acute Ischemic Stroke patients receiving intravenous tissue plasminogen activator (tPA – “the clot busting drug”) therapy in 60 minutes or less. The requirement is 50 percent. In addition, St. Luke’s CT Scan turnaround time averaged 14 minutes from the time the CT Scan was ordered, to the time of the radiologist’s final report. The national goal for this measure is 45 minutes. As a result of exceeding these metrics, the St. Luke’s team is able improve the patient’s outcome by minimizing the damage that can be caused from the decreased flow of blood to the brain that occurs during a stroke.
“St. Luke’s Medical Center should be commended for its commitment to implementing standards of care and protocols for treating stroke patients,” said Lee H. Schwamm, M.D., chair of the Get With The Guidelines National Steering Committee. “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.
