UC Health’s UC Medical Center and West Chester Hospital have once again received national recognition for the quality of care they provide to stroke patients.
Each hospital has received the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines® Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award. The award recognizes UC Health’s commitment to and success in implementing the highest standard of stroke care by ensuring that every stroke patient receives treatment according to nationally accepted recommendations and standards.
UC Medical Center is home to Greater Cincinnati’s first adult Comprehensive Stroke Center, directed by Aaron Grossman, MD, and West Chester Hospital is a Primary Stroke Center, directed by Natalie Kreitzer, MD. This is the eighth year UC Medical Center has received the AHA/ASA designation and the fourth year for West Chester Hospital.
“We know that someone has a stroke in the U.S. every 40 seconds, making it a leading cause of death for Americans,” states Pooja Khatri, MD, co-director of the Stroke Center of Excellence at the University of Cincinnati Gardner Neuroscience Institute and a professor in the Department of Neurology and Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the UC College of Medicine. “UC Health’s Comprehensive Stroke Center team of physicians and clinicians take this statistic very seriously and work diligently to deliver the most advanced treatments that save lives, which is further supported by research and clinical trials that enable us to find new solutions to stroke treatment and recovery.”
Additionally, UC Medical Center received the Target: Stroke Honor Roll with Advanced Therapy recognition, which means they met quality levels developed to reduce the time between the patient’s arrival at the hospital and treatment with the clot-buster tissue plasminogen activator (tPA), developed in part by researchers at the UC College of Medicine and the only drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat ischemic stroke. Further, UC Medical Center successfully treated at least 50% of qualified stroke patients within 90 minutes of arriving directly to the hospital and within 60 minutes of arriving by EMS transport.
West Chester Hospital also received Target: Stroke Honor Roll and Target: Type 2 Diabetes Honor Roll recognition, meeting quality measures developed with more than 90% of compliance for 12 consecutive months for the “Overall Diabetes Cardiovascular Initiative Composite Score.”
UC Medical Center and West Chester Hospital earned the recognition by meeting specific quality achievement measures for the diagnosis and treatment of stroke patients at a set level for a designated period. These measures include evaluation of the proper use of medications and other stroke treatments aligned with the most up-to-date, evidence-based guidelines with the goal of speeding recovery and reducing death and disability for stroke patients.
Stroke is the No. 5 cause of death and a leading cause of adult disability in the U.S., according to the AHA/ASA. On average in the U.S., someone has a stroke every 40 seconds.
As a leader in stroke care within Greater Cincinnati, UC Health launched the region’s first Mobile Stroke Unit in August 2020, which quickly delivers advanced stroke care to those who need it most.