Four hospitals honored for excellent stroke care

Congratulations to four Intermountain hospitals who've received the American Heart Association’s Get With the Guidelines Stroke Gold Plus honors. The award recognizes the facility’s commitment to ensuring patients receive nationally-recognized stroke treatment based on the latest scientific evidence. The honorees include: Intermountain Medical Center, McKay-Dee Hospital, Utah Valley Hospital, and Dixie Regional Medical Center. 

The Gold Plus designation signifies the hospital has reached the goal of treating patients with 85 percent or higher compliance to American Heart Association/American Stroke Association core standard levels of care for a 24-month period. Varying degrees of honor roll recognition are also possible based on corresponding criteria, such as Target Stroke Elite status, which recognizes door-to-needle times within 60 minutes for at least 85 percent of applicable patients. McKay-Dee received the highest-possible recognition status in all measures.  

Here’s a breakdown of the honors received by each facility: 

According to the American Heart Association (AHA), patient awareness of elite stroke care may be more critical now than ever. While stroke is the fifth cause of death in the United States, between March 15 and May 23, visits to hospital emergency departments for stroke declined 20 percent. In addition, a Harris poll published in June on behalf of the AHA found roughly 25 percent of adults experiencing a heart attack or stroke would rather stay at home than risk COVID infection at the hospital. These concerns are higher in minority populations, with 33 percent of Black and 41 percent of Latino respondents stating they would forego care. 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.

Leave a comment in Yammer.