MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The WVU Stroke Center and the WVU Heart and Vascular Institute have again been recognized by the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines® quality-improvement program for their excellence in care and commitment to improvement.
“Our Stroke and Heart and Vascular programs are among our premiere programs at WVU Medicine, and both are national leaders in their respective specialties,” Albert L. Wright Jr., president and CEO of the West Virginia University Health System, said. “These awards are the result of dedicated teams of individuals who come to work and provide our patients with the highest level of care each and every day. We are honored to receive these recognitions, and we are proud of the people who made them possible.”
The WVU Stroke Center – a Joint Commission certified Comprehensive Stroke Center – received the Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Gold Plus Achievement Award with Target: StrokeSM Honor Roll Elite Plus. The Stroke Center has been a Gold Plus recipient for eight years. The award is given to hospitals that consistently meet Get With The Guidelines-Stroke achievement indicators and quality measures.
Target: Stroke Honor Roll Elite Plus recognizes hospitals that reduce the time between the patient’s arrival at the hospital and treatment with the clot-buster tissue plasminogen activator, or tPA. A short “door-to-needle” time is imperative to preserve brain function after a stroke. In 2017, the WVU Stroke Center’s median tPA treatment time was 38 minutes, 8 minutes below the national average for participating hospitals. Nationally, participating hospitals treated 49 percent of patients in less than 45 minutes; in 2017, the Stroke Center treated 77 percent of patients in less than 45 minutes.
The WVU Heart and Vascular Institute earned the Heart Failure Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award with Target: Heart FailureSM Honor Roll by meeting specific quality achievement measures for the diagnosis and treatment of heart failure patients, including evaluation of the patient, proper use of medications, and aggressive risk-reduction therapies. Before patients are discharged, they also receive education on managing their heart failure and overall health, a scheduled follow-up visit, and other care transition interventions.
The Target: Heart Failure Honor Roll designation indicates a hospital that works to reduce hospital readmissions for heart failure patients and helps patients improve their quality of life in managing this chronic condition.
Get With The Guidelines is the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s hospital-based quality improvement program that provides hospitals with tools and resources to increase adherence to the latest research-based guidelines.
For more information on the WVU Stroke Center, visit www.wvumedicine.org/stroke.
For more information on the WVU Heart and Vascular Institute, visit www.wvumedicine.org/heart.