Memorial Hospital Receives Get With The Guidelines – Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award

For Immediate Release Dec. 4, 2013

GULFPORT, Miss.—Memorial has received the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines®-Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement award. The award recognizes Memorial’s commitment and success in implementing excellent care for stroke patients, according to evidence-based guidelines.

To receive the award, Memorial achieved 85 percent or higher adherence to all Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Quality Achievement indicators for two or more consecutive 12-month intervals and achieved 75 percent or higher compliance with five of eight Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Quality Measures, which are reporting initiatives to measure quality of care. These measures include aggressive use of medications, such as antithrombotics, anticoagulation therapy, deep vein thrombosis 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 Guidelines-Stroke award Memorial has also been recognized as a recipient of the association’s Target: Stroke Honor Roll, for improving stroke care. Target: Stroke is a national quality improvement campaign of the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association designed to improve outcomes for ischemic stroke patients by helping hospitals achieve door-to-needle (DTN) times of 60 minutes or less. By participating in Target: Stroke, hospital teams can work towards eliminating delays in treating stroke patients, with the ultimate goal of saving lives and reducing long-term disability. To date, more than 800 hospitals have enrolled in Target: Stroke, with new hospitals joining all the time. If your hospital hasn’t already signed on, please consider becoming part of this important lifesaving effort.

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.

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. For more information, visit heart.org/quality.

For more information about Memorial’s Stroke Center, Mississippi’s first nationally Certified Primary Stroke Center, visit www.gulfportmemorial.com