Rochester General Health System
Rochester General Hospital Receives Prestigious Award From the American Stroke Association
03/19/2009
The American Stroke Association recently awarded Rochester General Hospital its Get With The Guidelines—Stroke (GWTG-Stroke) Gold Performance Achievement Award at the association’s International Stroke Conference 2009. The award recognizes Rochester General’s commitment and success in implementing a higher standard of stroke care by ensuring that stroke patients receive treatment according to evidence-based guidelines. The Rochester General Stroke Center is a neuromedicine collaboration with the University of Rochester Medical Center.
“For acute stroke, time to treatment is a critical key to outcome prediction, “ said Dr. W. Scott Burgin, Associate Professor of Neurology and Imaging Sciences at the University of Rochester and Director of the RGH Stroke Center. “Receiving the Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Gold Performance Achievement Award demonstrates that Rochester General is continuing to treat its stroke patients quickly and effectively.”
Through GWTG-Stroke, Rochester General is tracking comprehensive efforts to rapidly diagnose and treat stroke patients admitted to the emergency department. This includes being equipped to provide brain-imaging scans, having neurologists available to conduct patient evaluations and using clot-busting medications when appropriate.
To receive the GWTG-Stroke Gold Performance Achievement Award, Rochester General consistently complied for at least 24 months with the requirements in the GWTG-Stroke program. These include aggressive use of medications like tPA, antithrombotics, anticoagulation therapy, DVT prophylaxis, cholesterol reducing drugs, and smoking cessation. This 24-month evaluation period reflects an ongoing effort of the hospital to continually maintain 85 percent compliance required for an award.
“The American Stroke Association recognizes Rochester General’s Stroke Center for successfully implementing proven standards of care for stroke treatment,” said Lee H. Schwamm, M.D., vice chair of the Get With The Guidelines steering committee and vice chairman of the neurology department at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. “By meeting with Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Gold Performance Achievement Aware criteria, Rochester General demonstrates its active, ongoing effort to improve the outcomes of the stroke patients it serves and save more lives.”
The GWTG Patient Management Tool provides access to up-to-date cardiovascular and stroke science at the point of care. “Evidence from leading scientific journals continues to support the effectiveness of Get With The Guidelines-Stroke. Through this program, Rochester General continues to focus on providing high quality, evidence based stroke care. This is of significant importance as the number of ischemic stroke patients continues to grow due to a large aging population and an increasing stroke incidence,” said Dr. Burgin.
GWTG is a comprehensive program that provides an online interactive assessment and report tool, resources, quarterly workshops, training and feedback to staff at participating hospitals. The goal is to improve implementation of evidence-based interventions that are proven to reduce complications after stroke and the chances of a subsequent stroke or heart attack.
