Posted: 5/23/2016
AHA Award recognizes Parkland’s commitment to quality stroke care
Parkland Memorial Hospital received the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines®-Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award with Target: StrokeSM Honor Roll. The award recognizes the hospital’s commitment to providing the most appropriate stroke treatment according to nationally recognized, research-based guidelines.
Hospitals must achieve 85 percent or higher adherence to all Get With The Guidelines-Stroke achievement indicators for two or more consecutive 12-month periods and achieve 75 percent 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. Parkland 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.
“A stroke patient loses 1.9 million nerve cells each minute stroke treatment is delayed. This recognition further demonstrates our commitment to delivering advanced stroke treatments to patients quickly and safely,” said Jennifer Cross, RN, MSN, ACNS-BC, Parkland Stroke Program Coordinator. “Parkland continues to strive for excellence in the acute treatment of stroke patients. The recognition from the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines-Stroke further reinforces our team’s hard work.”
Parkland has also met specific scientific guidelines as a Primary Stroke Center, featuring a comprehensive system for rapid diagnosis and treatment of stroke patients admitted to the emergency department.
“The American Heart Association and American Stroke Association recognize Parkland Memorial Hospital for its commitment to stroke care,” said Paul Heidenreich, MD, MS, national chairman of the Get With The Guidelines Steering Committee and Professor of Medicine at Stanford University. “Research has shown there are benefits to patients who are treated at hospitals that have adopted the Get With The Guidelines program.”
Get With The Guidelines® puts the expertise of the American Heart Association and American Stroke Association to work for hospitals nationwide, helping hospital care teams ensure the care provided to patients is aligned with the latest research-based guidelines. Developed with the goal to save lives and improve recovery time, Get With The Guidelines® has impacted more than 3 million patients since 2003.
Michael Jones, a 70-year-old Farmers Branch dentist, arrived at the new Parkland Memorial Hospital at 6 a.m. on Thursday, Aug. 20, 2015 before the sun came up and moments after cloths draping entry signs outside the just-opened Emergency Department were removed. Becoming a part of Dallas County history as the brand new Parkland ED’s first patient wasn’t how Dr. Jones planned to spend his morning. But when he awoke to his usual 5:30 a.m. alarm to start getting ready for work, he knew something wasn’t right.
“I had the sensation that my right foot slipped, but what actually happened was my whole left side collapsed and I fell as I walked into the bathroom,” Dr. Jones said. “My wife Becky heard me fall and came running. She said, ‘Mike, your speech is slurred. I think you’ve had a stroke.’ She gave me an aspirin, called 911 and the paramedics arrived just a few minutes later.”
When asked where they wanted to go for treatment, Dr. Jones’s wife answered immediately: “The new Parkland hospital. We knew they have a top quality stroke unit at Parkland, plus we had heard about the amazing technology at the new facility. I knew it would be the best place for my husband,” she said.
The very first patient to have a CT scan and an MRI in the hospital, Dr. Jones learned from the doctors at Parkland that there was a small clot in his brain.
“Strokes are brain attacks, so every minute counts,” said the physician who evaluated Dr. Jones, Mark Goldberg, MD, a Parkland neurologist and Chairman of Neurology at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. “Dr. Jones received state-of-the-art care with a team that was extremely well prepared, right from the start.”
Dr. Jones was discharged from Parkland the following day, made a full recovery and was back to work within two weeks. He commended the “outstanding” care provided at Parkland.
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. On average, someone in the U.S. suffers a stroke every 40 seconds, someone dies of a stroke every four minutes, and nearly 800,000 people suffer a new or recurrent stroke each year.
Learn more about the Parkland Stroke Program.