St. Mary’s Health Care System has received its fifth consecutive Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Gold-Plus Quality Achievement Award from the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association. 

The award is the highest level of recognition available for treatment of patients with stroke, a life-threatening condition in which blood flow to part of the brain is blocked by a blood clot or torn blood vessel. The Gold Plus Award recognizes St. Mary’s for implementing specific quality improvement measures outlined by the AHA/ASA for the treatment of stroke patients.

In addition to the Gold Plus award, AHA/ASA also recognized St. Mary’s for the third year in a row on its Target: Stroke Honor Roll for improving stroke care. The honor roll recognizes hospitals that meet stroke quality measures that reduce the time between hospital arrival and treatment with the clot-busting drug tPA, the only drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat ischemic stroke.  When given within three hours of the onset of symptoms, tPA can help many patients recover more quickly and with less risk of severe disability. 

Get With The Guidelines-Stroke helps hospital teams utilize the most up-to-date, research-based guidelines with the goal of speeding recovery and reducing death and disability for stroke patients. St. Mary’s earned the award by meeting specific quality achievement measures for the diagnosis and treatment of stroke patients at a set level for a designated period.  These measures include aggressive use of medications and risk-reduction therapies aimed at reducing death and disability and improving the lives of stroke patients. 

“In a stroke, time lost is brain lost,” said C. Van Morris, M.D., neurohospitalist and St. Mary’s Chief of Neurological Sciences.  “Receiving our fifth consecutive Stroke Gold Plus award demonstrates our commitment to being one of the top hospitals in the country for providing aggressive, proven stroke care.  We will continue to focus on ensuring that our patients receive care that is based on internationally respected clinical guidelines.”

“We are pleased to recognize St. Mary’s Health Care System for their commitment and dedication to stroke care,” said Deepak L. Bhatt, M.D., M.P.H., national chairman of the Get With The Guidelines steering committee and Executive Director of Interventional Cardiovascular Programs at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. “Studies have shown that hospitals that consistently follow Get With The Guidelines quality improvement measures can reduce patients’ length of stays and 30-day readmission rates and reduce disparity gaps in care.”

Get With The Guidelines–Stroke also helps St. Mary’s staff implement prevention measures. These measures include educating stroke patients to manage their risk factors, be aware of warning signs for stroke, and be sure to take their medications properly.  Patient education is provided by St. Mary’s neuroscience physicians and nurses, and by stroke coordinator Joanne Lockamy, RN.

In addition to one-on-one education for the patient and family, St. Mary’s provides customized patient education materials at discharge, with information tailored to the patient’s individual needs and risks.  These take-away materials, developed in conjunction with the AHA/ASA, are written in an easy-to-understand format and are available in either English or Spanish, depending on the patient’s needs.

According to the AHA/ASA, stroke is the number four cause of death in America overall, the number three cause of death among women, and a leading cause of adult disability.  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.