Memorial Hospital West Achieves AHA/ASA National Stroke Gold-Plus Award With Target: Stroke Honor Elite Plus Designation - Pembroke Pines, FL

A great stroke association leader would be contacting these hospitals and tell them to stop putting out these false puffery articles and just focus on their factual results. But that is a pipe dream of mine.
 These are NOT result awards so they don't tell you anything about how good the program is. Call that hospital president(

Aurelio M. Fernandez, III, FACHE

 

President and Chief Executive Officer,
Memorial Healthcare System

) 

telephone number: 954-265-5805

  and demand to know what the RESULTS are; 30 day deaths, 100% recovery, tPA efficacy?
There is absolutely nothing in here that tells me that the RESULTS are better in this hospital than other hospitals. I don't give a crap about how well you do processes.
Big f*cking whoopee.
Guidelines here: You can see how this is nothing to be impressed about. This is all indirect action, not results.
http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/HealthcareResearch/GetWithTheGuidelinesHFStrokeResus/GetWithTheGuidelinesStrokeHomePage/Get-With-The-Guidelines-Stroke-Overview_UCM_308021_Article.jsp

The puffery article here:
http://www.benzinga.com/pressreleases/16/05/p8031590/memorial-hospital-west-achieves-ahaasa-national-stroke-gold-plus-award- 
Memorial Hospital West has received the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association's Get With The Guidelines®-Stroke Gold Plus Achievement Award with Target: StrokeSM Honor Roll Elite Plus designation.
This achievement, a second for Memorial Healthcare System, recognizes its commitment to emergency stroke care(not RESULTS) to ensure that stroke patients receive optimal treatment according to nationally recognized, evidence-based guidelines.
Memorial Regional Hospital was recognized for this level of achievement in 2015 for its excellence in stroke care and earned the Target Stroke Elite-Plus award again this year.

To receive the Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award, hospitals must achieve 85 percent or higher adherence to all Get With The Guidelines-Stroke achievement indicators for two or more consecutive 12-month periods and achieved 75 percent or higher compliance with five of eight Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Quality measures.
To qualify for the Target: Stroke Honor Roll Elite Plus, 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. If given intravenously in the first three hours after the start of stroke symptoms, tPA has been shown to significantly reduce the effects of stroke and lessen the chance of permanent disability.
Memorial Hospital West earned the award by meeting specific quality benchmarks for the diagnosis and treatment of stroke patients at a set level for a designated period. These quality measures are designed to help hospital teams provide the most up-to-date, evidence-based guidelines with the goal of speeding recovery and reducing death and disability for stroke patients.
"When it comes to treating stroke, 'time is brain,'" says Brijesh P. Mehta, MD, Medical Director, Stroke and Neurocritical Care, Memorial Neuroscience Institute. "Our multidisciplinary stroke team and the parallel system of care make Memorial Neuroscience Institute at two of our hospitals among the best stroke centers in the country - treating some of highest volumes of patients, with continually improving outcomes, and participating in ongoing landmark research studies to further strengthen our commitment to the field."
"We are pleased to recognize Memorial Hospital West for their commitment 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 length of stay and 30-day readmission rates and reduce disparities in care."