Piedmont Athens Regional Medical Center has received the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Gold Plus Elite Plus Quality Achievement Award.

As the only hospital in  the area to achieve this Elite Plus quality status, this award recognizes Piedmont Athens Regional’s commitment to ensuring stroke patients receive the most appropriate treatment according to nationally recognized, research-based guidelines based on the latest scientific evidence.

“Piedmont Athens Regional is dedicated to improving the quality of care for our stroke patients by implementing the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines-Stroke initiative,” said Charles Peck, M.D., Piedmont Athens Regional president and CEO. “The tools and resources provided help us track and measure our success in meeting evidenced-based clinical guidelines developed to improve patient outcomes.”      

Piedmont Athens Regional 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 evaluation of the proper use of medications and other stroke treatments aligned with the most up-to-date, evidence-based guidelines with the goal of speeding recovery and reducing death and disability for stroke patients. Before discharge, patients should also receive education on managing their health, get a follow-up visit scheduled, as well as other care transition interventions.

Piedmont Athens Regional also received the association’s Target: Stroke Elite Plus award, which requires hospitals meet quality measures developed to reduce the time between the patient’s arrival at the hospital and treatment with the clot-buster tissue plasminogen activator, or tPA, the only drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat ischemic stroke.

“Receiving this Elite Plus award shows our commitment to delivering advanced stroke treatment quickly and safely to our patients,” Dr. Peck said.

Piedmont Athens Regional is the only hospital in the Athens area to have 24-hour in house neurology coverage, which has allowed for the hospital to achieve this Elite status and provide rapid stroke treatment in under 60 minutes – a number set by Get With The Guidelines-Stroke standards.

“We are pleased to recognize Piedmont Athens Regional for their commitment to stroke care,” said Eric E. Smith, M.D., national chairman of the Get With The Guidelines Steering Committee and an associate professor of neurology at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. “Research has shown that hospitals adhering to clinical measures through the Get With The Guidelines quality improvement initiative can often see fewer readmissions and lower mortality rates.”

According to the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, stroke is the number five cause of death and a leading cause of adult disability in the United States. On average, someone in the U.S. suffers a stroke every 40 seconds and nearly 795,000 people suffer a new or recurrent stroke each year.