BMC Recognized For Prevention Program

PITTSFIELD — Berkshire Medical Center (BMC) recently received the American Heart Association’s Get with the Guidelines Coronary Artery Disease Performance Achievement Award.

BMC joins the University of California Los Angeles Medical Center and Presbyterian/St. Luke’s Medical Center in Denver in receiving the honor.

BMC and UCLA are the only hospitals to receive the award for two consecutive years. The award recognizes BMC’s commitment and success in implementing a higher standard of cardiac care that effectively improves treatment of patients hospitalized with coronary artery disease. Under the Get with the Guidelines program, patients are started on aggressive risk-reduction therapies such as cholesterol-lowering drugs, aspirin, ACE inhibitors, and beta-blockers in the hospital, and receive smoking-cessation and weight-management counseling and referrals for cardiac rehabilitation before they are discharged. Hospitals that receive the award have demonstrated that at least 85{06cf2b9696b159f874511d23dbc893eb1ac83014175ed30550cfff22781411e5} of their coronary patients without contraindications are discharged following treatments recommended by the American Heart Association.