Mercy Hospital Receives Stroke Gold Plus Award & Target Stroke Honor Roll

Award demonstrates Mercy Hospital's commitment to quality care for stroke patients

Buffalo, NY – May 31, 2013 – The Stroke Center at Mercy Hospital of Buffalo has received the American Heart Association/ American Stroke Association’s (AHA) Get With The Guidelines® Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award and Target Stroke Honor Roll. The award recognizes the hospital’s commitment and success in implementing a higher standard of stroke care by ensuring that stroke patients receive treatment according to nationally accepted standards.

To receive the award, Mercy Hospital achieved of 85 percent or higher adherence to all Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Quality Achievement indicators for two or more consecutive 12-month intervals and achieved 75 percent or higher compliance with six of 10 Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Quality Measures, which are reporting initiatives to measure quality of care. These measures include aggressive use of medications, such as antithrombotics, anticoagulation therapy, deep vein thrombosis prophylaxis, cholesterol reducing drugs and smoking cessation, all aimed at reducing death and disability and improving the lives of stroke patients.

In addition to the Get With The Guideline-Stroke award, Mercy Hospital has also been recognized as a recipient of the association’s Target: Stroke Honor Roll, for improving stroke care. Over the past year, at least 50 percent of the hospital’s eligible ischemic stroke patients have received tissue plasminogen activator, or tPA, within 60 minutes of arriving at the hospital (known as ‘door-to-needle’ time). A thrombolytic, or clot-busting agent, tPA is the only drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the urgent treatment of ischemic stroke. If given intravenously in the first three hours after the start of stroke symptoms, tPA has been shown to significantly reverse the effects of stroke and reduce permanent disability.

“With a stroke, time lost is brain lost, and the Get With The Guidelines–Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award demonstrates Mercy Hospital’s commitment to being one of the top hospitals in the country for providing excellent, proven stroke care,” said Dr. Peterkin Lee-Kwen, Director of the Stroke Center at Mercy Hospital. “We will continue with our focus on providing care that has been shown in the scientific literature to quickly and efficiently treat stroke patients with evidence-based protocols.”