South Florida Baptist Hospital has once again proved its dedication to care after receiving the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines Target: Stroke Honor Roll Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award.
The hospital received the honor due to its commitment to ensuring stroke patients receive the best and most appropriate treatments according to the nationally recognized and research-based guidelines, which are routinely updated to reflect the latest scientific data.
“South Florida Baptist Hospital 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,” Karen Kerr, hospital president, said. “The tools and resources provided help us track and measure our success in meeting evidenced-based clinical guidelines developed to improve patient outcomes.”
The award is given out based on specific quality achievement measures for both the diagnosis and treatment of local stroke patients. Some of the measures include the “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.”
One thing that also sets the hospital apart is the fact it goes above and beyond the call of duty when patients are discharged, ensuring they receive ample education on managing their health, get a follow-up appointment scheduled and other transition interventions that make the difference in exceptional care.
Strokes are the number five cause of death and a leading cause of adult disability in the United States. In this country alone, someone suffers a stroke every 40 seconds, with nearly 795,000 people suffering a new or recurrent stroke each year. Of those, 600,000 are first attacks.
Almost three quarters of the stroke patients are over the age of 65 and the risk of having a stroke more than doubles for every decade of age after someone turns 55. Having high blood pressure is the most important risk factor for strokes and it is crucial people monitor their health to ensure they’re keeping their bodies as healthy as possible.
The American Heart Association/American Stroke Association also awarded SFBH the Target: Stroke Honor Roll award. In order to qualify for this award each hospital has to meet separate measures that were developed to reduce the time between the “patient’s arrival at the hospital and treatment with the clot-buster tissue plasminogen activator, or Atleplase, the only drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat ischemic stroke.”
The risk of ischemic strokes, which occur when the arteries to your brain are narrowed or blocked and thus you experience severely reduced blood flow, is about double in current smokers than in nonsmokers after adjustments for other risk factors.
“We are pleased to recognize South Florida Baptist Hospital for their commitment to stroke care,” Lee H. Schwamm, M.D., national chairperson of the Quality Oversight Committee and Executive Vice Chair of Neurology, Director of Acute Stroke Services, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, said. “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.”