PHILADELPHIA — The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) has received the Get With The Guidelines® Heart Failure Gold Quality Achievement Award from the American Heart Association. The award recognizes HUP's commitment and success in implementing excellent care for heart failure patients, according to evidence-based guidelines.
To receive the award, HUP has reached an ambitious goal of treating heart failure patients with 85 percent compliance for at least 24 months to core standard levels of care as outlined by the American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology secondary prevention guidelines for heart failure patients.
"HUP serves a large population of patients with heart failure, and our health care team remains committed to the very best care for these vulnerable patients," said Mariell Jessup, MD, medical director of the Penn Medicine Heart & Vascular Center. "We are thrilled to see our efforts recognized once again by the American Heart Association."
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 and decrease mortality.
Under Get With The Guidelines® Heart Failure, 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 education about their disease and nutritional counseling as well as referrals for cardiac rehabilitation before being discharged.
Get With The Guidelines® Heart Failure helps HUP'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 HUP to improve the quality of care it provides heart failure patients, save lives and ultimately, reduce healthcare costs by lowering the recurrence of heart attacks.
"This year, we have surpassed our previous guideline compliance rates from just over the mandatory 85 percent compliance, to sustaining greater than 95 percent compliance for all quality measures. This is a clear testament to the dedication and determination of our team of caregivers," said Michelle Walsh, RN, BSN, Clinical Effectiveness and Quality Improvement Coordinator for HUP.
According to the American Heart Association, about 5.7 million people suffer from heart failure. Statistics also show that, each year, 670,000 new cases are diagnosed and more than 277,000 people will die of heart failure.
Penn Medicine is one of the world’s leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, excellence in patient care, and community service. The organization consists of the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Penn’s Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine, founded in 1765 as the nation’s first medical school.
The Perelman School of Medicine is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $550 million awarded in the 2022 fiscal year. Home to a proud history of “firsts” in medicine, Penn Medicine teams have pioneered discoveries and innovations that have shaped modern medicine, including recent breakthroughs such as CAR T cell therapy for cancer and the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines.
The University of Pennsylvania Health System’s patient care facilities stretch from the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania to the New Jersey shore. These include the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, Chester County Hospital, Lancaster General Health, Penn Medicine Princeton Health, and Pennsylvania Hospital—the nation’s first hospital, founded in 1751. Additional facilities and enterprises include Good Shepherd Penn Partners, Penn Medicine at Home, Lancaster Behavioral Health Hospital, and Princeton House Behavioral Health, among others.
Penn Medicine is an $11.1 billion enterprise powered by more than 49,000 talented faculty and staff.