Woodland Healthcare Receives Get With The Guidelines Stroke Gold Plus Award

Woodland Healthcare has received the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association's Get with the Guidelines® - Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award for providing excellent stroke care for the second consecutive year.

Woodland Healthcare has been certified by the Joint Commission as a Primary Stroke Center since 2006 and is one of six Catholic Healthcare West hospitals that make up the Mercy Neurological Institute of Greater Sacramento.

The award recognizes Woodland Healthcare’s commitment and success in implementing excellent care for stroke patients, according to evidence-based guidelines. To receive this award, Woodland Healthcare achieved 85 percent or higher adherence to all Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Quality Achievement Indicators for two or more consecutive 12-month intervals and achieved 75 percent or higher compliance with six of 10 stroke quality measures.

These measures include aggressive use of medications such as tPA, anti-thrombotics, anticoagulation therapy, DVT prophylaxis, cholesterol reducing drugs and smoking cessation, all aimed at reducing death and disability and improving the lives of stroke patients.

“With a stroke, time lost is brain lost,” said Michael Patmas, MD, chief medical officer at Woodland Healthcare. “The Get with the Guidelines –Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award demonstrates Woodland Healthcare’s commitment to being one of the top hospitals in the country for providing aggressive, proven stroke care. We will continue with our focus on providing care that has been shown in the scientific literature to quickly and efficiently treat stroke patients with evidence-based protocols.”

“Woodland Healthcare is to be commended for its commitment to implementing standards of care and protocols for treating stroke patients,” said Lee H. Schwamm, MD, chair of the Get With The Guidelines National Steering Committee and director of the Telestroke and Acute Stroke Services at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. “The full implementation of acute care and secondary prevention recommendations and guidelines is a critical step in saving the lives and improving outcomes of stroke patients.”

Get With The Guidelines–Stroke uses the “teachable moment,” the time soon after a patient has had a stroke, when they are most likely to listen to and follow their healthcare professionals’ guidance. Studies demonstrate that patients who are taught how to manage their risk factors while still in the hospital reduce their risk of a second heart attack or stroke.

Through Get With The Guidelines–Stroke, customized patient education materials are made available at the point of discharge, based on patients’ individual risk profiles. The take-away materials are written in an easy-to-understand format and are available in English and Spanish. In addition, the Get With The Guidelines Patient Management Tool gives healthcare providers access to up-to-date cardiovascular and stroke science at the point of care.

This is the fourth Get with the Guidelines Stroke Award for Woodland Healthcare. In 2009, the hospital received a Get With The Guidelines Silver Performance Achievement Award. In 2010, Woodland Healthcare was awarded with the Get With The Guidelines Silver Plus Performance Achievement Award in January and the Get With The Guidelines Gold Plus Performance Achievement Award in July.

According to the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, stroke is one of the leading causes of death and a leading serious, long-term disability in the U.S. 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.