Receives American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines-Heart Failure Silver Plus Quality Achievement Award
OCEANSIDE — Tri-City Medical Center has received the Get With The Guidelines®–Heart Failure Silver Plus Quality Achievement Award from the American Heart Association. The recognition signifies that Tri-City Medical Center has reached an exceptional goal of treating heart failure patients according to the guidelines of care recommended by the American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology.
This marks the second year that Tri-City Medical Center has been recognized with a quality achievement award for its heart failure program. In 2012, the medical center was awarded the Bronze level.
Get With The Guidelines–Heart Failure helps Tri-City Medical Center’s staff develop and implement acute and secondary prevention guideline processes to improve patient care and outcomes. The program provides Tri-City Medical Center with a web-based patient management tool, best practice discharge protocols and standing orders, along with a robust registry and real-time benchmarking capabilities to track performance.
The quick and efficient use of guideline procedures can improve the quality of care for heart failure patients, save lives and ultimately, reduce healthcare costs by lowering the recurrence of heart attacks.
In addition to the Get With The Guideline-Heart Failure award, Tri-City Medical Center has also been recognized as a recipient of the association’s Target: Heart Failure Honor Roll, for improving patient care. Target: Heart Failure is an initiative that provides healthcare professionals with resources and materials designed to help them advance heart failure awareness, prevention, treatment and recovery. Medical centers are required to meet criteria that optimizes and improves medication adherence, provides early follow-up care and coordination and enhances patient education. The goal is to reduce re-admissions and help patients improve their quality of life in managing this chronic condition
“Recent studies show that patients treated in medical centers participating in the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines-Heart Failure program receive a higher quality of care and may experience better outcomes,” said Lee H. Schwamm, M.D., chair of the Get With The Guidelines National Steering Committee and director of the TeleStroke and Acute Stroke Services at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Mass. “Tri-City Medical Center’s team is to be commended for their commitment to improving the care of their patients.”
Following Get With The Guidelines–Heart Failure treatment guidelines, heart failure patients are started on aggressive risk-reduction therapies if needed, including cholesterol-lowering drugs, beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors, aspirin, diuretics and anticoagulants while in the medical center. Before discharge, they also receive education on managing their heart failure and overall health, including lifestyle modifications and follow-up care. Medical centers must adhere to these measures at a set level for a designated period of time to be eligible for the achievement awards.
“Tri-City Medical Center is dedicated to making our care for heart failure patients among the best in the country. The American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines–Heart Failure program helps us to accomplish this goal,” said Tri-City Medical Center CEO Larry Anderson. “This recognition demonstrates that we are on the right track and we’re very proud of our team.”
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. However, many heart failure patients can lead a full, enjoyable life when their condition is managed with proper medications and devices and with healthy lifestyle changes.
