Stroke Care at Crozer Health Awarded Again for Quality

Crozer Health recently received the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines® Stroke Goldquality achievement award. The award recognizes the system’s commitment to ensuring stroke patients receive the most appropriate treatment according to nationally recognized, research-based guidelines based on the latest scientific evidence.

Crozer Health earned the award by meeting specific quality achievement measures for the diagnosis and treatment of stroke patients at a set level for a designated period. These measures include evaluation of the proper use of medications and other stroke treatments aligned with the most up-to-date, evidence-based guidelines with the goal of speeding recovery and reducing death and disability. Based on the guidelines, patients should also receive education on managing their health, and get a follow-up visit scheduled before discharge.

“The tools and resources in the Get With The Guidelines program help us track and measure our success in meeting evidenced-based clinical guidelines and improve patient outcomes,” said Suzanne Hefton, RN, stroke program coordinator for Crozer Health . “Our stroke care at Crozer-Chester Medical Center, Delaware County Memorial Hospital and Taylor Hospital has been recognized by the AHA/ASA for several years.” 

Additionally, Crozer-Chester received the association’s Gold Plus 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, explained the AHA/ASA.

“Crozer-Chester’s door-to-needle (DTN) time for administration of tPA is an average of 50 minutes,” said Mandy J. Binning, M.D., the health system’s stroke program medical director. “The AHA/ASA’s Target:Stroke program encourages DTN efficiency of 60 minutes, so implementing these measures helped us improve the hospital’s reaction time and exceed expectations. This is testimony to our stroke team’s dedication to continuously improve our quality outcomes.” 

Thomas J. Bader, M.D., Crozer Health ’s chief medical officer, concluded, “Hospitals adhering to clinical measures through Get With The Guidelines often have fewer readmissions and lower mortality rates. The strength of our stroke program is the result of combining good people with outcomes-based goals.”

According to the AHA/ASA, stroke is the fifth leading 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.