Swedish Cherry Hill and Swedish Edmonds Recognized with the 2015 Get with the Guidelines-Stroke Quality Achievement Award

According to the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association (AHA/ASA), stroke is the number five 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 every four minutes, and 795,000 people suffer a new or recurrent stroke each year.

Swedish is committed to increasing the quality of care and outcomes for stroke patients. Recently, Swedish Cherry Hill and Swedish Edmonds were recognized by the AHA/ASA's Get With The Guidelines®-Stroke Quality Achievement Awards. Swedish Cherry Hill received 'Gold' status with Target: Stroke Elite Plus Honor Roll. Swedish Edmonds received 'Gold Plus' status with Target: Stroke Elite Honor Roll.

In order to receive the Gold 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. For Gold Plus status, Swedish Edmonds achieved 75 percent or higher compliance with five of eight Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Quality measures.

Swedish Cherry Hill qualified for the Target: Stroke Elite Plus Honor Roll, which means it meet quality measures that reduce the time between the patient's arrival at the hospital and treatment with 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.

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.

Get With The Guideline is the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association's 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 5 million patients since 2001. For more information, visit heart.org/quality or heart.org/QualityMap