Wing receives AHA’s ’Get With The Guidelines’ Gold Quality Award
PALMER — Wing Memorial Hospital and Medical Centers has received the Get With The Guidelines – Heart Failure Gold Quality Achievement Award from the American Heart Assoc. The recognition signifies that Wing Memorial Hospital and Medical Centers has reached an aggressive goal of treating heart failure patients with 85{06cf2b9696b159f874511d23dbc893eb1ac83014175ed30550cfff22781411e5} compliance for at least 24 months to core standard levels of care as outlined by the American Heart Assoc./American College of Cardiology secondary prevention guidelines for heart failure patients.
Get With The Guidelines is a quality-improvement initiative that provides hospital staff with tools that follow proven evidence-based guidelines and procedures in caring for heart-failure patients to prevent future hospitalizations.
Under Get With The Guidelines, heart-failure patients are started on aggressive risk-reduction therapies such as cholesterol-lowering drugs, beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors, aspirin, diuretics, and anticoagulants while in the hospital. They also receive alcohol/drug use and thyroid-management counseling as well as referrals for cardiac rehabilitation before being discharged.
“The full implementation of national heart-failure-guideline-recommended care is a critical step in preventing recurrent hospitalizations and prolonging the lives of heart-failure patients,” 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. “The goal of the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines program is to help hospitals like Wing Memorial Hospital and Medical Centers implement appropriate evidence-based care and protocols that will reduce disability and the number of deaths in these patients. Published scientific studies are providing us with more and more evidence that Get With The Guidelines works; patients are getting the right care they need when they need it; that’s resulting in improved survival.”
Charles E. Cavagnaro III, MD, FACP, president and CEO of Wing Memorial Hospital and Medical Centers, said Wing is “dedicated to making our care for heart-failure patients among the best in the country and implementing the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines — Heart Failure program will help us accomplish this goal by making it easier for our professionals to improve the long-term outcome for these patients.”
Get With The Guidelines — Heart Failure helps Wing Memorial’s staff develop and implement acute- and secondary-prevention guideline processes. The program includes quality-improvement measures such as care maps, discharge protocols, standing orders and measurement tools. This quick and efficient use of guideline tools will enable Wing Memorial Hospital and Medical Centers to improve the quality of care it provides heart-failure patients, save lives and ultimately, reduce health care costs by lowering the recurrence of heart attacks.
