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Lakeland Receives Recognition for Quality Stroke Care
Jul 25, 2019

(ST. JOSEPH) – Spectrum Health Lakeland has received the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines® Target: Stroke Honor Roll Elite Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award. The award recognizes the hospital’s commitment to ensuring stroke patients receive the most appropriate treatment according to nationally recognized, research-based guidelines.

Lakeland earned the award by meeting specific quality achievement measures for the diagnosis and treatment of stroke patients with the goal of speeding recovery and reducing death and disability. Before discharge, patients should also receive education on managing their health, get a follow-up visit scheduled, as well as other care transition interventions.

Lakeland also received the association’s Target: Stroke Honor Roll Elite award. To qualify for this recognition, hospitals must meet quality measures developed to reduce the time between the patient’s arrival at the hospital and treatment with the clot-buster tissue plasminogen activator, or tPA, the only drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat ischemic stroke.

“Lakeland has been stroke certified for over a decade and has achieved Gold Plus status for the past five years which further signifies our commitment to provide excellent patient care to our community,” said Chris Fox, RN, director of nursing and executive director of clinical care services, Spectrum Health Lakeland. “Through our multi-disciplinary team approach, we have achieved high level results in most all measures that matter most for stroke patients including 75 percent of our patients receiving life-saving tPA medication within 60 minutes or less upon arriving at the hospital.”

“We are pleased to recognize Spectrum Health Lakeland for their commitment to stroke care,” said Lee H. Schwamm, M.D., national chairperson of the Quality Oversight Committee and Executive Vice Chair of Neurology, Director of Acute Stroke Services, Massachusetts General Hospital. “Research has shown that hospitals adhering to clinical measures through the Get With The Guidelines quality improvement initiative can often see fewer readmissions and lower mortality rates.”

According to the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, stroke is the fifth 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 and nearly 795,000 people suffer a new or recurrent stroke each year.