Baystate Franklin Medical Center Receives Award

GREENFIELD — Baystate Franklin Medical Center has received the American Heart Assoc./American Stroke Assoc. Get With The Guidelines – Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award. The award recognizes Baystate Franklin’s commitment to and success in implementing excellent care for stroke patients, according to evidence-based guidelines.

To receive the award, BFMC achieved an 85{06cf2b9696b159f874511d23dbc893eb1ac83014175ed30550cfff22781411e5} or higher adherence to all Get With The Guidelines – Stroke quality-achievement indicators for two or more consecutive 12-month intervals, and achieved 75{06cf2b9696b159f874511d23dbc893eb1ac83014175ed30550cfff22781411e5} or higher compliance with six of 10 Get With The Guidelines – Stroke quality measures, which are reporting initiatives to measure quality of care.

These measures include timely and appropriate use of medications, such as t-PA, antithrombotics, anticoagulation therapy, DVT prophylaxis, cholesterol-reducing drugs, and smoking cessation, all aimed at reducing death and disability and improving the lives of stroke patients. They also include individualized patient education on how to reduce risk for a second stroke or heart attack, as well as customized educational materials for patients upon their discharge from the hospital.

At Baystate Franklin, a multidisciplinary team of individuals comprise the Stroke Oversight Committee. They include representatives from the Quality and Risk Management, Laboratory, Emergency, Hospital Medicine, Nursing, Dietary, Cardiopulmonary, and Radiology departments and Baystate Health Ambulance. The team meets every other month to review outcomes and address issues to ensure that the process of treating someone with stroke symptoms runs smoothly, quickly, and flawlessly. Dr. Rajiv Padmanabhan of Baystate Medical Practices – Greenfield Neurology is medical director of the committee. The stroke coordinator is Annette Szpila, assistant director of Professional Development, and Nancy Woodring, Quality and Risk Management, is performance improvement coordinator.