PHILADELPHIA — The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Hospital, Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, Chester County Hospital, and Lancaster General Hospital have received Get With The Guidelines®-Stroke Quality Achievement Awards from the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association.
The awards recognize all five Penn Medicine hospitals’ success in implementing nationally recognized, evidence-based guidelines for treating stroke patients.
“These achievements are a result of our continuous focus on quality and performance improvement for our patients presenting with stroke,” said Scott E. Kasner, MD, director of Penn Medicine’s Comprehensive Stroke Center at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. “We are very proud that all five Penn Medicine hospitals have been recognized for meeting the high Get With The Guidelines standards.”
The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Hospital, and Penn Presbyterian Medical Center received the Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Gold Plus award. Chester County Hospital and Lancaster General Hospital received the Silver Plus Quality Award.
Hospitals must show at least 85 percent compliance with all seven achievement indicators and 75 percent compliance with five of eight quality measures for two years to receive the Gold Plus award and one year to receive the Silver Plus award.
Achievement indicators include administering evidence based anti-stroke medications and providing smoking cessation counseling. Quality measures include meeting additional medication standards and providing stroke education services.
In addition to the Get With The Guideline-Stroke awards, the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Hospital qualified for Stroke Honor Roll -- Elite Plus recognition while Penn Presbyterian Medical Center qualified for Stroke Honor Roll -- Elite recognition and Lancaster General and Chester County Hospital qualified for the Stroke Honor Roll. Criteria for the Honor Roll and its accompanying levels include additional adherence to evidence based medication regimens.
In fiscal year 2015, the five Penn Medicine hospitals together cared for close to 1,800 stroke patients.
According to the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, stroke is one of the leading causes of death and serious, long-term disability in the United States. On average, someone suffers a stroke every 40 seconds; someone dies of a stroke every four minutes; and 795,000 people suffer a new or recurrent stroke every year. And, while stroke is a leading cause of disability, it is also the leading preventable cause of disability.
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.