St. Mary-Corwin Medical Center Receives Gold Plus Stroke and Target: Stroke Awards

June 24, 2014

(Pueblo, CO) - St. Mary-Corwin Medical Center has received the Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Gold-Plus Quality Achievement Award and has been recognized as a Target: Stroke Honor Roll hospital by the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association. This is the second consecutive year that St. Mary-Corwin has received this dual award. Being honored for excellent patient care is the best recognition a hospital can receive.

St. Mary-Corwin earned these awards by implementing specific quality improvement measures outlined by the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association for the diagnosis and treatment of stroke patients for a set level for a designated period. These measures include aggressive use of medications and risk-reduction therapies aimed at reducing death and disability and improving the lives of stroke patients. The Target: Stroke Honor Roll specifically awards hospitals on reducing the time between hospital arrival and treatment with the clot-buster tPA, the only drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat ischemic stroke. People who receive this drug within three hours of suffering a stroke and experiencing onset symptoms may recover quicker and are less likely to suffer severe disability. Get With The Guidelines Stroke helps hospital teams provide the most up-to-date, research-based guidelines with the goal of speeding recovery and reducing death and disability for stroke patients.

We are pleased to recognize St. Mary-Corwin Medical Center for their commitment and dedication to stroke care, said Deepak L. Bhatt, M.D., M.P.H., national chairman of the Get With The Guidelines steering committee and Executive Director of Interventional Cardiovascular Programs at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Studies have shown that hospitals that consistently follow Get With The Guidelines quality improvement measures can reduce patients length of stays and 30-day readmission rates and reduce disparity gaps in care.

St. Mary-Corwin provides top of the line training for first responders who take care of stroke patients. Their Stroke Center has a 24-hour on-call team with stroke trained physicians from multiple specialties, including neurology, neurosurgery, radiology, and emergency medicine. The team utilizes state-of-the-art technology to provide evaluation and management of patients who exhibit signs of a stroke. Get With The GuidelinesStroke also helps St. Mary-Corwins staff implement prevention measures, which include educating stroke patients to manage their risk factors and to be aware of warning signs for stroke and ensuring they take their medications properly. Hospitals can make customized patient education materials available upon discharge, based on the patients individual risk profiles. The take-away materials are written in an easy-to-understand format in either English or Spanish.

This award demonstrates the excellent care that we deliver at St. Mary-Corwin Medical Center. We provide our patients with fast-acting, exceptional stroke treatment that prepares them for discharge and a healthy recovery. While they are hospitalized, we meet and exceed the standards set by the Joint Commission for proper stroke care, said Ashley Trujillo, Stroke Program Coordinator at St. Mary-Corwin.

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St. Mary-Corwin also participates in community events and provides positive outreach to the community, such as the Colorado Health Day at the Colorado State Fair on Saturday August 30. The hospitals mega brain will be on display and people will be able to tour the exhibit. Stroke risk assessments will be available to the community through this event, which will allow people to learn more about the risk factors and prevention of stroke disease.

According to the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, stroke is the number four cause of death and a leading cause of adult 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.

Strokes are the leading cause of disability and the third leading cause of death in the United States. Treatment is most effective when started immediately. This cutting edge stroke care is available 24/7 right here in our backyard. St. Mary-Corwin's greatest reward is caring for their patients. That's why they are committed to turning treatment guidelines into lifelines.

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About St. Mary-Corwin Medical Center
St. Mary-Corwin Medical Center is nationally recognized for its award-winning programs in womens services, orthopedics, cancer, cardiology, stroke, trauma and emergency services. St. Mary-Corwins expert team of physicians, nurses and caregivers provide compassionate, quality patient care, with access to the latest in medical technology. St. Mary-Corwin is part of Centura Health, connecting individuals, families and neighborhoods across Colorado, Utah and western Kansas with more than 6,000 physicians and 17,100 of the best hearts and minds in health care. For more information on St. Mary-Corwin Medical Center, please visit www.stmarycorwin.org or follow on Twitter @StMaryCorwin and facebook.com/StMaryCorwin.

About Get With The Guidelines
Get With The Guidelines is the American Heart Association/American Stroke Associations hospital-based quality improvement program that provides hospitals with the latest research-based guidelines. Developed with the goal of saving lives and hastening recovery, Get With The Guidelines has touched the lives of more than 4 million patients since 2001. For more information, visit heart.org/quality or heart.org/myhealthcare.