Dawn Kleindorfer, MD, Co-Medical Director of the UC Comprehensive Stroke Center.
Contact: Keith Herrell
(513) 558-4559
[email protected]
CINCINNATI—For the second straight year, University of Cincinnati Medical Center has received the Get With The Guidelines–Stroke Gold Plus 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 is a quality improvement program that 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. According to the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, stroke is the No. 5 cause of death and a leading cause of adult disability in the United States.
Gold is the highest of three levels of Get With the Guidelines achievement awards; Gold-Plus is an optional advanced level of recognition acknowledging hospitals for consistent compliance with quality measures.
UC Medical Center earned the award by meeting specific quality achievement measures for the 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.
UC Medical Center also received the association’s Target: Stroke Honor Roll Elite designation for meeting stroke quality measures that reduce the time between hospital arrival and treatment with the clot-buster tPA, the only drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat ischemic stroke. People who suffer a stroke who receive the drug within three hours of the onset of symptoms may recover quicker and are less likely to suffer severe disability. Stroke researchers at UC and UC Health played a leading role in developing and testing tPA.
“Our team at UC Health and UC Medical Center 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 Dawn Kleindorfer, MD, a UC Health neurologist and Co-Director of the Comprehensive Stroke Center at the UC Neuroscience Institute, a partnership of the College of Medicine and UC Health.
“Winning this award for the second consecutive year is a tribute to the hard work and dedication of our caregivers,” Dr. Kleindorfer added. “Our team prides itself on providing the best possible care for stroke patients in Greater Cincinnati and beyond.”
“We are pleased to recognize UC Medical Center for their commitment to stroke care,” said Deepak Bhatt, MD, 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.”
In 2013 UC Medical Center was certified by the Joint Commission as an Advanced Comprehensive Stroke Center, a new level of certification reserved for institutions with specific abilities to receive and treat the most complex stroke cases. There is no higher stroke certification.
