Falmouth Hospital Receives Stroke Care Awards

HYANNIS – Falmouth Hospital is being recognized for its stroke care.

The hospital recently received the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get with the Guidelines Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award, along with Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s Defect-free Care Award from the Paul Coverdell National Stroke Program.

The Get With The Guidelines award recognizes the hospital’s commitment and success in ensuring stroke patients receive the most appropriate treatment according to nationally recognized, research-based guidelines. 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 achieve 75 percent or higher compliance with five to eight GWTG-Stroke Quality measures.

The quality measures focus on appropriate use of guideline-based care for stroke patients, including aggressive use of medications, such as clot-busting and anti-clotting drugs, blood thinners and cholesterol-reducing drugs, preventive action for deep vein thrombosis and smoke cessation counseling.

“Research has shown there are benefits to patients who are treated at hospitals that have adopted the Get With The Guidelines program,” said Paul Heidenreich, MD, MS, national chairman of the Get With The Guidelines Steering Committee and professor of medicine at Stanford University.

The DPH Defect-free Care Award from the Paul Coverdell National Acute Stroke Program recognizes hospitals that, from the period of January to December 2017, provided defect-free care to 90 percent or more of their stroke patients by utilizing all of the interventions for which each patient was eligible. Defect-free care is achieved when a patient receives the appropriate care based on clinical guidelines.

“We are honored to have been recognized by the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association and the Department of Public Health with these important awards,” said Michael K. Lauf, president and CEO of Cape Cod Healthcare, the parent organization of Falmouth Hospital. “Our physicians and stroke teams understand that providing the latest and best care as quickly as possible results in better outcomes for stroke patients, and they continually strive to meet this goal.”