In The News

UC Health West Chester Hospital Receives Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Bronze Quality Achievement Award

October 19, 2015  |  UC Health, West Chester Hospital
West Chester Hospital, UC Health

West Chester, OHIO – Oct. 19, 2015 – UC Health’s West Chester Hospital is proud to receive the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines®-Stroke Bronze Quality Achievement Award. The award recognizes West Chester Hospital’s commitment and success in ensuring stroke patients receive the most appropriate treatment according to nationally recognized, research-based guidelines based on the latest scientific evidence. 

To receive the Bronze Quality Achievement award, hospitals must achieve 85 percent or higher adherence to all Get With The Guidelines-Stroke achievement indicators for one calendar quarter. 

These quality measures are designed to help hospital teams provide the most up-to-date, evidence-based guidelines with the goal of speeding recovery and reducing death and disability for stroke patients. They focus on appropriate use of guideline-based care for stroke patients, including aggressive use of medications such as clot-busting and anti-clotting drugs, blood thinners and cholesterol-reducing drugs, preventive action for deep vein thrombosis and smoking cessation counseling. 

“As an individual experiences a stroke, the more time that goes by before proper medical intervention, the more likely that the brain will suffer irreversible damage. This award demonstrates our commitment to ensuring that patients receive care based on nationally-recognized clinical guidelines,” said West Chester Hospital President and CEO Kevin Joseph, MD.  “West Chester Hospital is dedicated to continually improving the way in which we treat stroke patients and the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines-Stroke program helps us to achieve that goal.”

West Chester Hospital has also met specific scientific guidelines as a Primary Stroke Center, featuring a comprehensive system for rapid diagnosis and treatment of stroke patients. 

“We are pleased to recognize UC Health’s West Chester Hospital for their commitment to stroke care,” said Deepak L. Bhatt, M.D., M.P.H., national chairman of the Get With The Guidelines steering committee and 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 length of stay and 30-day readmission rates and reduce disparities in care.”

For providers, Get With The Guidelines-Stroke offers quality-improvement measures, discharge protocols, standing orders and other measurement tools. Providing hospitals with resources and information that make it easier to follow treatment guidelines can help save lives and ultimately reduce overall healthcare costs by lowering readmission rates for stroke patients.

For patients, Get With The Guidelines-Stroke uses the “teachable moment,” the time soon after a patient has had a stroke, when they learn how to manage their risk factors while still in the hospital and recognize the F.A.S.T. warning signs of a stroke.

According to the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, stroke is the number five cause of death and a leading cause of adult disability in the United States. 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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About West Chester Hospital

West Chester Hospital is an all-private room hospital located in West Chester, Ohio. The hospital, comprised of 166 adult beds and 33 infant bassinets, is a member of the University of Cincinnati (UC) Health system. Utilizing the very latest in medical technology, and drawing upon the university’s nearly 200 years of research and medical expertise, West Chester Hospital provides discovery-driven care in a pleasant, healing environment. The hospital is conveniently located and easily accessible from Interstate 75 at Tylersville Road. Services available include an emergency department, inpatient and outpatient surgical procedures, as well as a full spectrum of inpatient and outpatient diagnostic testing and treatment amenities.  The hospital also serves as a designated Level III Trauma Center. West Chester Hospital has been the recipient of the Healthgrades® Outstanding Patient Experience AwardTM for four consecutive years (2012, 2013, 2014, 2015) – placing the facility’s performance within the top 5 percent of the nation for patient satisfaction. For more information about West Chester Hospital, please visit UCHealth.com/WestChesterHospital.

 

About UC Health

UC Health, the University of Cincinnati’s affiliated health system, includes University of Cincinnati Medical Center, ranked one of the best hospitals in the region by U.S. News & World Report; West Chester Hospital, one of Cincinnati’s newest hospitals and the recipient of the 2015 Healthgrades® Outstanding Patient Experience Award™, placing the facility’s performance above 90 percent of similar hospitals nationally for patient satisfaction; Drake Center, Cincinnati’s premier provider of long-term acute care; University of Cincinnati Physicians, Cincinnati’s largest multi-specialty practice group with more than 700 board-certified clinicians and surgeons; Lindner Center of HOPE, the region’s premier mental health center; and several institutes focusing on the areas of cancer, the neurosciences, cardiovascular and diabetes. To learn more, visit UCHealth.com.

About Get With The Guidelines®

Get With The Guidelines® is the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s hospital-based quality improvement program that provides hospitals with the latest research-based guidelines. Developed with the goal of saving lives and hastening recovery, Get With The Guidelines has touched the lives of more than 5 million patients since 2001. For more information, visit heart.org/quality or heart.org/QualityMap.

 

CONTACT: 

Kristy Davis, Public Relations & Marketing

Office: (513) 585-5348

Cell: (214) 498-0334

Kristy.Davis@UCHealth.com