Signature Healthcare Receives American Heart Association’s

 Signature Healthcare has received the Get With The Guidelines®–Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award from the American Heart Association for the second year in a row. The award recognizes commitment and success in implementing a higher standard of care by ensuring that stroke patients receive treatment according to nationally accepted guidelines.

            Get With The Guidelines–Stroke helps Signature Healthcare staff develop and implement acute and secondary prevention guideline processes to improve patient care and outcomes.

      The quick and efficient use of guideline procedures can improve the quality of care for stroke patients and may reduce disability and save lives.

      “Recent studies show that patients treated in hospitals participating in the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines-Stroke program receive a higher quality of care and may experience better outcomes,” said Lee H. Schwamm, M.D., 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, Mass. “Signature Healthcare is to be commended for their commitment to improving the care of their patients.”

      Following Get With The Guidelines-Stroke treatment guidelines, patients are started on aggressive risk-reduction therapies including the use of medications such as tPA, antithrombotics and anticoagulation therapy, along with cholesterol reducing drugs and smoking cessation counseling. These are all aimed at reducing death and disability and improving the lives of stroke patients. Hospitals must adhere to these measures at a set level for a designated period of time to be eligible for the achievement awards.

      “We are dedicated to making our care for stroke patients among the best in the country. The American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines–Stroke program helps us to accomplish this goal,” said Claire Earnshaw, Quality Resources Coordinator for Signature Healthcare.

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