Doctors Medical Center has received the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines^®-Stroke Silver Plus Quality Achievement Award and Target: Stroke Honor Roll Award.  These awards recognize Doctors Medical Center’s 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.

            To receive the Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Silver Plus Quality Achievement Awards, Doctors Medical Center achieved at least 12 consecutive months of compliance in stroke quality achievement measures. These measures include aggressive use of medications, such as antithrombotics, anticoagulation therapy, VTE prophylaxis, cholesterol reducing drugs and smoking cessation; all aimed at reducing death and disability and improving the lives of stroke patients.

            In addition to the Get With The Guideline-Stroke Silver Plus Award, Doctors Medical Center has also been recognized as a recipient of the association’s Target: Stroke Honor Roll, for improving stroke care in patients who receive thrombolytic therapy. Over the past quarter, at least 50 percent of the hospital’s eligible ischemic stroke patients have received tissue plasminogen activator, or tPA, within 60 minutes of arriving at the hospital (known as ‘door-to-needle’ time). The thrombolytic, or clot-busting agent, tPA is the only drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the urgent treatment of ischemic stroke. If given intravenously in the first three hours after the start of stroke symptoms, tPA has been shown to significantly reverse the effects of stroke and reduce permanent disability.

      “With a stroke, time lost is brain lost, and the Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Silver Plus Quality Achievement Award demonstrates that our staff is committed to providing care that has been shown in the scientific literature to quickly and efficiently treat stroke patients with evidence-based protocols,” said Lani Dickinson, Associate Administrator. Doctors Medical Center is to 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 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.”

      Get With The Guidelines-Stroke uses the “teachable moment,” the time soon after a patient has had a stroke, when they are most likely to listen to and follow their healthcare professionals’ guidance. Studies demonstrate that patients who are taught how to manage their risk factors while still in the hospital reduce their risk of a second heart attack or stroke. Through Get With The Guidelines-Stroke program, customized patient education materials are made available at the point of discharge, based on patients’ individual risk profiles. The take-away materials are written in an easy-to-understand format and are available in English and Spanish. In addition, the Get With The Guidelines Patient Management Tool provides access to up-to-date cardiovascular and stroke science at the point of care.

      “The time is right for Doctors Medical Center to be focused on improving the quality of stroke care by implementing Get With The Guidelines-Stroke. The number of acute ischemic stroke patients eligible for treatment is expected to grow over the next decade due to increasing stroke incidence and a large aging population,” said Lani Dickinson.

      According to the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, stroke is one of the leading causes of death and 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.

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