Mercy Medical Center Recognized for Quality Stroke Care

SPRINGFIELD — Mercy Medical Center received the American Heart Assoc./American Stroke Assoc. Get with the Guidelines – Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award with Target: Stroke Honor Roll. The award recognizes the hospital’s commitment to providing the most appropriate stroke treatment according to nationally recognized, research-based guidelines based on the latest scientific evidence.

Hospitals must achieve 85{06cf2b9696b159f874511d23dbc893eb1ac83014175ed30550cfff22781411e5} or higher adherence to all Get with the Guidelines – Stroke achievement indicators for two or more consecutive 12-month periods and achieve 75{06cf2b9696b159f874511d23dbc893eb1ac83014175ed30550cfff22781411e5} or higher compliance with five of eight Get with the Guidelines – Stroke Quality measures to receive the Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award.

To qualify for the Target: Stroke Honor Roll, hospitals must meet quality measures developed to reduce the time between the patient’s arrival at the hospital and treatment with the clot-buster tissue plasminogen activator, or tPA, the only drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat ischemic stroke. If given intravenously in the first three hours after the start of stroke symptoms, tPA has been shown to significantly reduce the effects of stroke and lessen the chance of permanent disability. Mercy 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 quality measures are designed to help hospital teams follow the most up-to-date, evidence-based guidelines with the goal of speeding recovery and reducing death and disability for stroke patients.

Mercy Medical Center has also received two prestigious awards from the Paul Coverdell National Acute Stroke Program, a quality-improvement collaborative funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and administered by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) that supports Primary Stroke Service hospitals. Mercy has received the organization’s Defect-free Care Award and the Dysphagia Screening Greater Than or Equal to 90{06cf2b9696b159f874511d23dbc893eb1ac83014175ed30550cfff22781411e5} Award.

Defect-free care is achieved when a patient receives the appropriate care based on clinical guidelines. The Coverdell Defect-free Care Award recognizes hospitals that, from the period of January to December 2016, provided defect-free care to 90{06cf2b9696b159f874511d23dbc893eb1ac83014175ed30550cfff22781411e5} or more of their stroke patients by utilizing all of the interventions for which each patient was eligible. The number of Coverdell hospitals providing defect-free care to the majority of their patients has increased significantly over the last six years, resulting in many more patients receiving high-quality care.

The Coverdell Stroke Program’s Dysphagia Screening Greater Than or Equal to 90{06cf2b9696b159f874511d23dbc893eb1ac83014175ed30550cfff22781411e5} Award recognizes hospitals that completed dysphagia screening on at least 90{06cf2b9696b159f874511d23dbc893eb1ac83014175ed30550cfff22781411e5} of stroke patients from January to December 2016.