In October 2011 MetroHealth’s Stroke & Cerebrovascular Center received the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines - Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award. MetroHealth was the only hospital in Ohio named to the association’s Stroke Honor Roll.

To receive the Gold Plus award, MetroHealth achieved 85% or higher adherence to all Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Quality Achievement indicators for two or more consecutive, 12-month intervals and achieved 75% or higher compliance with six of 10 Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Quality Measures.

These measures include aggressive use of medications to avoid recurrent stroke, complications of the illness and speed recovery, use of cholesterol reducing drugs and smoking cessation programs - all aimed at reducing death and disability and improving the lives of stroke patients.

In addition to the Get With The Guidelines - Stroke award, MetroHealth was named to the association’s Target: Stroke Honor Roll for improving stroke care. In the third quarter of this year, at least 50% of MetroHealth’s eligible ischemic stroke patients received a clot-busting agent within an hour of arriving at the hospital. A clot-busting agent is the only drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the urgent treatment of ischemic stroke. If given intravenously in the first three hours after the start of stroke symptoms, clot-busting agents have been shown to significantly reverse the effects of stroke and reduce permanent disability.

“With a stroke, time is brain, and the Get With The Guidelines–Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award demonstrates MetroHealth’s commitment to being one of the top hospitals in the country for providing aggressive, proven stroke care,” said Joseph Hanna, MD, Chairman of the Department of Neurology at MetroHealth. “We will continue to focus on providing care that quickly and efficiently treats stroke patients with evidence-based protocols.”

“MetroHealth is to be commended for its commitment to implementing standards of care and protocols for treating stroke patients,” said Lee H. Schwamm, MD, 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. “The full implementation of acute care and secondary prevention recommendations and guidelines is a critical step in saving the lives and improving outcomes of stroke patients.”

Under Get With The Guidelines–Stroke, MetroHealth teaches patients about their risk for future strokes while they’re still in the hospital – the time when they’re most likely to listen and follow doctor’s orders. Studies show that this helps reduce their risk of a second heart attack or stroke.

In addition, patients are given customized education materials about their stroke risks when they are discharged from the hospital. These materials are easy to understand and are available in English and Spanish. In addition, the Get With The Guidelines Patient Management Tool gives health care providers access to the latest in cardiovascular and stroke care.

“The number of acute ischemic stroke patients eligible for treatment is expected to grow over the next decade due to increasing stroke incidents and a large aging population,” said Dr. Schrock…. “So the time is right for MetroHealth to focus on improving the quality of stroke care by implementing Get With The Guidelines–Stroke.”

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 each year.