Hackensack Meridian Health Palisades Medical Center Honored With Quality Achievement Awards For Heart Failure And Stroke Care   

Hackensack Meridian Health Palisades Medical Center Honored With Quality Achievement Awards For Heart Failure And Stroke Care

The American Heart Association and American Stroke Association have recognized Hackensack Meridian Health Palisades Medical Center with their 2018 Get With The Guidelines® Gold-Plus Quality Achievement Awards for the medical center’s treatment of heart failure and stroke patients.

“Hackensack Meridian Health Palisades Medical Center is dedicated to making our care for heart failure and stroke patients among the best in the country. The Get With The Guidelines program helps us to accomplish this goal,” said Anthony J. Passannante, Jr., M.D., FACC, President of Palisades Medical Center. “With these awards, our hospital demonstrates our commitment to ensure that our patients receive care based on internationally-respected clinical guidelines. We applaud our physicians, skilled nurses, and devoted staff for their tireless efforts in helping us reach these high standards of excellence in patient care.”

Get With The Guidelines – Heart Failure is a quality improvement program that helps hospital teams follow the most up-to-date, research-based standards with the goal of speeding recovery and reducing hospital readmissions for heart failure patients. Launched in 2005, numerous published studies have demonstrated the program’s success in achieving patient outcome improvements, including reductions in 30-day readmissions. Palisades Medical Center earned the Get With The Guidelines – Gold Plus Heart Failure Award by meeting specific quality achievement measures for the diagnosis and treatment of heart failure patients. These measures include evaluation of the patient, proper use of medications and aggressive risk-reduction therapies, such as ACE inhibitors/ARBs, beta-blockers, diuretics, anticoagulants, and other appropriate therapies. Before patients are discharged, they also receive education on managing their heart failure and overall health, get a follow-up visit scheduled, as well as other care transition interventions. Palisades Medical Center also received the association’s Target: Heart Failure Honor Roll. Target: Heart Failure is an initiative that provides hospitals with educational tools, prevention programs and treatment guidelines designed to reduce the risk of heart failure patients ending up back in the hospital. Hospitals are required to meet criteria that improves medication adherence, provides early follow-up care and coordination and enhances patient education. The goal is to reduce hospital readmissions and help patients improve their quality of life in managing this chronic condition.

According to the American Heart Association, about 5.7 million adults in the United States suffer from heart failure, with the number expected to rise to eight million by 2030. Statistics show that, each year, about 870,000 new cases are diagnosed, and about 50 percent of those diagnosed will die within five years. However, many heart failure patients can lead a full, enjoyable life when their condition is managed with proper medications or devices and with healthy lifestyle changes.

Get With The Guidelines – Stroke — Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award recognizes Palisades Medical Center’s commitment and success in ensuring stroke patients receive the most appropriate treatment according to nationally recognized, research-based guidelines based on the latest scientific evidence. To receive this 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 of eight Get With The Guidelines – Stroke Quality measures. 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. They 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 smoking cessation counseling. Palisades Medical Center also earned the Target: Stroke Honor Roll – Elite 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. 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. Palisades Medical Center earned the award by achieving Time to Intravenous Thrombolytic Therapy in 60 minutes or less in 75 percent or more of applicable acute ischemic stroke patients treated with IV tPA to improve quality of patient care and outcomes.

According to the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, stroke is the No. 5 cause of death and a leading cause of adult disability in the United States. On average, someone in the U.S. suffers a stroke every 40 seconds, someone dies of a stroke every four minutes, and nearly 800,000 people suffer a new or recurrent stroke each year.

About Hackensack Meridian Health Palisades Medical Center

Hackensack Meridian Health Palisades Medical Center is located at 7600 River Road in North Bergen, NJ, and it serves a population of 400,000 in Hudson and southern Bergen counties. The not-for-profit medical center is a part of the Hackensack Meridian Health System, and it features a 202-bed hospital and The Harborage, a 245-bed nursing home and rehabilitation center.

Palisades Medical Center is ranked as one of the top hospitals of its size in New Jersey by Inside Jerseymagazine and Castle Connolly Medical Ltd. The New Jersey Hospital Association (NJHA) has honored Palisades Medical Center with its prestigious Community Outreach Award for its year-round commitment to educate residents, improve access to care, and reduce health disparities. Palisades Medical Center is the largest employer in its service area with more than 1,300 employees. It has been recognized as one of Modern Healthcare’s Best Places to Work in Healthcare. For more information, please call 201-854-5000 or visit palisadesmedical.org.

About Get With The Guidelines®

Get With The Guidelines® is the American Heart Association’s/American Stroke Association’s hospital-based quality improvement program that provides hospitals with tools and resources to increase adherence to 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 6 million patients since 2001. For more information, visit heart.org.

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