Princeton Medical Center (PMC) has received the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines®-Stroke Silver Plus Quality Achievement Award, recognizing the hospital’s commitment to adhere to the latest evidence-based guidelines for diagnosing and treating stroke patients.
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. Nearly 795,000 people suffer a new or recurrent stroke each year.
Get With The Guidelines® is a hospital-based program that provides tools and resources to improve quality of care and outcomes for stroke patients. To earn the Silver Plus Award, PMC demonstrated 85 percent or greater compliance with eight targeted performance measures for at least one year. The performance measures relate to critical areas such as administering appropriate medications in a timely manner and providing patient/caregiver education or counseling.
“The Silver Plus Award represents the collective efforts of our stroke committee, physicians, nurses and therapists who have dedicated themselves to the care of stroke patients,” said Philip Tran, RN, Stroke Coordinator at PMC. “Such an achievement is only attained through teamwork and collaboration.”
The Journey Back
Princeton Health Facilitates Stroke Support Group
Individuals who have experienced a stroke, along with their loved ones and caregivers, are invited to Journey Back, a peer support group that strives to help people adjust to their lives and work toward regaining independence after a stroke. The group is facilitated by a social worker from the Acute Rehabilitation Unit at Princeton Medical Center.
Journey Back meets the second Wednesday of each month at Penn Medicine Princeton Health’s Community Wellness Department, 731 Alexander Road, Suite 103, Princeton, NJ 08540.
Attendance is free. To register, visit www.princetonhcs.org/calendar or call 1.888.897.8979.
Upcoming meetings:
August 8, 2018 – 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.
September 12, 2018 – 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.
October 10, 2018 – 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.
Measures on which hospitals are evaluated include the percentage of stroke patients who received:
- An intravenous, clot-busting medication within three hours of the time they were last known to be well (applicable only to those who arrived at the hospital within two hours)
- Antithrombotic therapy by the end of their second day in the hospital
- A prescription for antithrombotic therapy at discharge
- VTE—venous thromboembolism—prophylaxis on the day of or day after admission
- Smoking cessation education or counseling during hospital stay (can also apply to caregivers)
- Statin medications upon discharge to control high cholesterol, a risk factor for stroke
- Education during the hospital stay that addressed personal risk factors, warning signs, activating the emergency medical system, the need for follow-up after discharge and the medications they were prescribed
- An assessment for follow-up rehabilitation services
PMC achieved the required 85 percent or greater compliance on all eight measures and greater than 95 percent on six of them. Tran noted that PMC uses a nurse-driven, concurrent process to track performance on the core stroke performance measures, which allows the stroke committee to proactively address any performance issues.
In the Emergency Department, PMC utilizes a Helsinki protocol, meaning that patients brought in by Emergency Medical Services (EMS) with stroke symptoms are taken directly to the CT suite for diagnostic testing. A nurse accompanies the patient and EMS personnel.
This process helps expedite treatment, particularly the intravenous clot-busting drug, which cannot be administered until a stroke is confirmed by the CT scan.
The stroke committee—a multidisciplinary team that includes physicians, nurses, pharmacists, physical and occupational therapists and leadership—is dedicated to the continual improvement of the stroke program, Tran said.