Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center and UCLA Health Santa Monica have received the American Heart Association’s 2021 Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award for their commitment to ensuring stroke patients receive the most appropriate treatment according to nationally recognized, research-based guidelines.
Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center also received three additional awards:
- Target: Stroke Honor Roll Elite Award for meeting 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.
- Get With The Guidelines - Heart Failure award for implementing quality improvement measures that ensure cardiovascular patients receive efficient and coordinated care, ultimately leading to more lives saved, shorter recovery times and fewer returns to the hospital.
- Get With The Guidelines-Resuscitation Bronze Quality Achievement Award for their commitment to treating in-hospital cardiac arrest, ultimately helping to improve patient survival rates.
Both the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center and UCLA Health Santa Monica hospitals also received the Association’s Target: Type 2 Diabetes Honor Roll award for meeting quality measures developed with more than 90% of compliance for 12 consecutive months for the “Overall Diabetes Cardiovascular Initiative Composite Score.”
“The Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center is honored to be recognized by the American Heart Association for our dedication to helping our patients have the best possible chance of survival after a stroke,” said David S. Liebeskind, MD, the UCLA Stroke Center's director and a professor of neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “Get With The Guidelines-Stroke makes it easier for our teams to put proven knowledge and guidelines to work on a daily basis to improve outcomes for stroke patients.”
Stroke is the fifth cause of death and a leading cause of adult disability in the U.S. 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. Early stroke detection and treatment are key to improving survival, minimizing disability and speeding recovery times.
Get with the Guidelines-Stroke was developed to help hospital teams provide the most up-to-date, research-based guidelines with the goal of speeding recovery and reducing death and disability for treating stroke patients.
“We are pleased to recognize the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center for their commitment to stroke and cardiovascular 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, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts. “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.”
Visit the UCLA Comprehensive Stroke Center for more information on cerebral vascular disease at UCLA Health.
