UAB Medicine News

UAB Medicine received the Get With The Guidelines®-Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award and was named to the Target: Stroke Honor Roll by the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association. These honors recognize UAB Medicine’s commitment to providing the most appropriate stroke treatment according to nationally accepted, research-based guidelines that help speed recovery and reduce death and disability among stroke patients.

Hospitals must achieve 85 percent or greater adherence to all Get with the Guidelines-Stroke achievement indicators for two or more consecutive years and achieve 75 percent or better compliance with five of eight quality measures to receive the Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award.

To qualify for the Target: Stroke Honor Roll, hospitals must meet quality measures developed to reduce the time between the patient’s arrival at the hospital and treatment with the clot-busting 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. UAB Medicine earned these distinctions by meeting specific quality achievement measures for the diagnosis and treatment of stroke patients at set levels for a designated period.

“Every minute is crucial when treating stroke,” says Loring W. Rue III, MD, FACS, chief medical officer of UAB Health System. “The Gold Plus Quality Award and the Target: Stroke Honor Roll recognize UAB Medicine’s commitment to providing excellent, evidence-based stroke care. These honors recognize the hard work and dedication of our team and the continued efforts to quickly and safely treat our patients with the highest quality health care.”

According to the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, stroke is the nation’s fifth leading cause of death and a primary cause of adult disability. On average in the United States, someone 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.