PHILADELPHIA – The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Hospital, Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, Chester County Hospital, and Lancaster General Hospital have again received the annual Get With The Guidelines®-Stroke Quality Achievement Awards, as well as recognition on the Target: Stroke Honor Roll from the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association.
According to the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, stroke is the fifth-leading cause of death and the top cause of 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. However, 80 percent of strokes are preventable. By striving to meet the nationally recognized Get With The Guidelines® standards of achievement, hospitals not only gain a competitive edge in the marketplace through tangible evidence of their commitment to improving care, but stroke patients receive more rapid, quality care and ultimately can experience improved outcomes.
“The public health and individual impact of stroke is enormous,” said Scott E. Kasner, MD, director of Penn Medicine’s Comprehensive Stroke Center at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. “These awards and distinctions demonstrate our commitment to providing the highest level of care to stroke patients throughout the region at all Penn Medicine hospitals.”
This year, all five Penn Medicine hospitals received the Get With The Guidelines—Stroke Gold Plus award, which requires hospitals to maintain at least 85 percent compliance in each of core Stroke Achievement Measures for two or more consecutive years, such as administering evidence based anti-stroke medications, providing smoking cessation counseling, and prescribing Statin at discharge. Also required is 75 percent compliance with five or more additional Stroke Quality Measures, such as meeting medication standards and providing stroke education services.
Each hospital was also recognized on the Target: Stroke Honor Roll, with Pennsylvania Hospital and Penn Presbyterian Medical Center receiving the “Elite Plus” distinction, and the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and Lancaster General Hospital receiving the “Elite” distinction. Recognition for each of the levels of the Target: Stroke Honor Roll is achieved by meeting quality measures developed to reduce door-to-needle times for ischemic stroke patients being treated with tPA.
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.