Chesnut Hill Hospital Receives Quality Award For Stroke
Philadelphia, PA – Chestnut Hill Hospital has received the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get with the Guidelines®-Stroke Silver Plus Quality Achievement Award. The award recognizes Chestnut Hill'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 award, Chestnut Hill Hospital achieved at 12 consecutive months of 85 percent or higher adherence to all Quality Achievement indicators and achieved at least 75 percent or higher compliance with six of 10 Get with the Guidelines-Stroke Quality Measures during that same period of time, which are reporting initiatives to measure quality of care.
These measures include aggressive use of medications, such as antithrombotics, anticoagulation therapy, DVT 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 award, Chestnut Hill Hospital has also been recognized as a recipient of the association’s Target: Stroke Honor Roll, for improving stroke care. 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. A 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 earning this award demonstrates our staff commitment to providing care that has been shown in the scientific literature to quickly and efficiently treat stroke patients with evidence-based protocols,” says Teresa Kelly, CNO, Chestnut Hill Hospital.
“Chestnut Hill Hospital 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.”
“Following the Get with the Guidelines-Stroke program our staff uses the time soon after a patient has had a stroke, when they are most likely to listen to and follow professional guidance, to teach them about stroke,” says Kelly. 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. Patients take home customized education materials that are based on individual risk profiles.
“The time is right for Chestnut Hill Hospital 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 an aging population,” says Kelly.
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.
Chestnut Hill Hospital (CHH) is a community-based, university-affiliated, teaching hospital committed to excellent patient-centered care. CHH provides a full range of inpatient and outpatient, diagnostic and treatment services for our neighbors in northwest Philadelphia and eastern Montgomery County. More than 300 board-certified physicians comprise the medical staff and support medical specialties including minimally invasive laparoscopic and robotic surgery, cardiology, gynecology, oncology, orthopedics, urology, family practice and internal medicine. Our comprehensive services include primary care practices, two women’s centers and an off-site physical therapy center. CHH is affiliated with university-hospitals in Philadelphia for heart, stroke and cancer care, as well as our hospitalist and residency programs. Chestnut Hill has 132-beds and is accredited by the Joint Commission. To learn more about CHH, Visit.
Get With The Guidelines® is the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s hospital-based quality improvement program that empowers healthcare teams to save lives and reduce healthcare costs by helping hospitals follow evidence-based guidelines and recommendations. For more information, visit heart.org/quality.