Washington Hospital, Freemont, Calif, has received the Gold Plus Performance Achievement Award from the American Heart Association (AHA) and American Stroke Association (ASA) as prat of the AHA/ASA’s Get With The GuidelinesSM (GWTG) program, a national evidence-based initiative to improve stroke patients’ outcomes.
Hospitals receiving Get With The Guidelines Gold (Sustained) Performance Achievement Award have reached an aggressive goal of treating stroke patients with 85% or higher compliance to core standard levels of care for 24 consecutive months.
Washington Hospital Stroke Program Coordinator. Doug Van Houten, R.N., said in a press release that the Stroke Program’s commitment to strive for improvement will continue.
“You can never say, ‘We’re there, we’ve done it,’ and just sit back when it comes to stroke care,” he said. “There is a whole set of guidelines for what to do if someone is having a stroke, and our program consists of an entire package, from how to prevent it to managing life after stroke. We provide educational programs for the community. Our emergency room staff is trained to prioritize strokes and treat according to national guidelines. We also have special stroke units with clinicians specially trained in stroke who follow the important issues specific to stroke treatment.”
Van Houten points out that when he submitted Washington Hospital’s application for the GWTG program, he needed to provide proof that Washington’s program was achieving the guidelines.
“The program is required to submit data through an online data-management tool,” he says. “From there, the ASA can see our data, and we can compare our program with stroke programs throughout the country.”
Visit www.whhs.com for more information.
(Source: Press Release)
