St. Mary’s Medical Center has received the American College of Cardiology’s Get with the Guidelines Platinum Performance Achievement Award for 2015. St. Mary’s is one of only 319 hospitals nationwide to receive the honor.
The award recognizes St. Mary’s commitment and success in implementing a higher standard of care for heart attack patients and signifies that St. Mary’s has reached an aggressive goal of treating these patients to standard levels of care as outlined by the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association clinical guidelines and recommendations.
To receive the ACTION Registry–GWTG Platinum Performance Achievement Award,St. Mary’s consistently followed the treatment guidelines in the ACTION Registry–GWTG Premier for eight consecutive quarters and met a performance standard of 90 percent for specific performance measures. Full participation in the registry engages hospitals in a robust quality improvement process using data to drive improvements in adherence to guideline recommendations and overall quality of care provided to heart attack patients.
“Earning this award again is a proud achievement for us,” says Amy Alexander, Regional Director of Cardiovascular and Radiology Services at St. Mary’s. “It shows the coordination between EMS, Emergency Department and the cardiovascular team is saving lives in our community.”
The Center for Disease Control estimates that over 700,000 Americans suffer a heart attack each year. A heart attack occurs when a blood clot in a coronary artery partially or completely blocks blood flow to the heart muscle. Treatment guidelines include administering aspirin upon arrival and discharge, timely restoration of blood flow to the blocked artery, smoking cessation counseling and cardiac rehabilitation, among others.