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Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center honored with quality achievement award for stroke care

by jmaloni

Submitted

Fri, Apr 18th 2014 09:30 pm

Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center has received the Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Gold-Plus Quality Achievement Award for implementing specific quality improvement measures outlined by the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association for the treatment of stroke patients.

Get With The Guidelines Stroke helps hospital teams provide the most up-to-date, research-based guidelines with the goal of speeding recovery and reducing death and disability for stroke patients. Memorial Medical Center earned the award by meeting specific quality achievement measures for the rapid diagnosis and treatment of stroke patients at a set level for a designated period. These measures include aggressive use of medications and risk-reduction therapies aimed at reducing death and disability and improving the lives of stroke patients.

"Niagara Falls Memorial is dedicated to improving the quality of stroke care, and The American Heart Association/American Stroke Association's Get With The Guidelines-Stroke helps us achieve that goal," said Memorial President and CEO Joseph A. Ruffolo. "With this award, our hospital demonstrates our commitment to ensure that our patients receive care based on internationally respected clinical guidelines."

"We are pleased to recognize Memorial Medical Center for their commitment and dedication to stroke care," said Deepak L. Bhatt, M.D., M.P.H., national chairman of the Get With The Guidelines steering committee, executive director of interventional cardiovascular programs at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. "Studies have shown that hospitals that consistently follow Get With The Guidelines quality improvement measures can reduce patients' length of stays and 30-day readmission rates and reduce disparity gaps in care."

Get With The Guidelines-Stroke also helps Memorial's staff implement prevention measures, which include educating stroke patients to manage their risk factors and to be aware of warning signs for stroke, and ensuring they take their medications properly. Hospitals can make customized patient education materials available upon discharge, based on the patients' individual risk profiles. The take-away materials are written in an easy-to-understand format in either English or Spanish.

The American Heart Association/American Stroke Association states stroke is the No. 4 cause of death and a leading cause of adult 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.

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