Lexington, KY - Baptist Health Lexington, formerly Central Baptist, has received the Get With The Guidelines–Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award from the American Heart Association.
The award was given for Baptist Health Lexington’s implementation of ensuring stroke patients receive treatment according to nationally accepted guidelines, according to a release from the hospital.
Get With The Guidelines–Stroke helps Baptist Health Lexington’s staff develop and implement acute and secondary prevention guideline processes to improve patient care and outcomes. Use of guideline procedures can improve the quality of care for stroke patients and may reduce disability and save lives.
“Recent studies show that patients treated in hospitals participating in the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines–Stroke program receive a higher quality of care and may experience better outcomes,” 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.
Following Get With The Guidelines-Stroke treatment guidelines, patients are started on aggressive risk-reduction therapies including the use of medications such as tPA, antithrombotics and anticoagulation therapy, along with cholesterol reducing drugs and smoking cessation counseling. These are all aimed at reducing death and disability and improving the lives of stroke patients. Hospitals must adhere to these measures at a set level for a designated period of time to be eligible for the achievement awards.
This is the fifth consecutive year the hospital has received a quality award in this area.