The American Heart Association recently recognized a Forest Hills hospital for its exceptional care of stroke patients.
Long Island Jewish (LIJ) Forests Hills received the Stroke Honor Roll Elite Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award from the organization’s Get With the Guidelines program. The award recognizes LIJ Forest Hills’ commitment to giving stroke patients the most appropriate treatment according to nationally recognized, research-based guidelines and based on the latest scientific evidence.
The American Heart Association and American Stroke Association list strokes as the fifth cause of death and one of the leading causes of adult disability in the country. According to their statistics, someone in the United States has a stroke every 40 seconds and nearly 800,000 have a new or recurrent stroke every year.
“We are dedicated to improving the quality of care for our stroke patients by implementing the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines stroke initiative,” said Rohan Arora, MD, the hospital’s director of stroke. “The tools and resources provided help us track and measure our success in meeting evidence-based clinical guidelines developed to improve patient outcomes.”
The hospital met specific quality achievement measures including the proper use of medications and other stroke treatments aligned with the most up-to-date, evidence-based guidelines. The ultimate goal of these treatments is to speed up recovery and reduce death and disability for stroke patients.
Before a patient is discharged from the hospital, they receive education on how to manage their health, schedule a follow-up visit and other care transition interventions.
“We are pleased to recognize LIJ Forest Hills for their commitment to stroke care,” said Lee H. Schwamm, M.D., national chairperson of the quality oversight committee and executive vice chair of neurology, director of acute stroke services at the Massachusetts General Hospital. “Research has shown that hospitals adhering to clinical measures through the Get With The Guidelines quality improvement initiative can often see fewer readmissions and lower mortality rates.”
LIJ Forest Hills also received the AHA’s Target: StrokeSM Honor Roll Elite award. Hospitals who receive this recognition must meet quality measures created to reduce the time between patient arrival and treatment with the clot-buster tissue plasminogen activator, or tPA. This drug is the only one approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat ischemic stroke.
