February 13, 2008

Mercy Receives National Award for Achievement in Stroke Care

The American Stroke Association has awarded Mercy Medical Center—Sioux City its Get With The Guidelines–Stroke (GWTG–Stroke) Silver Performance Achievement Award. The honor recognizes Mercy’s commitment and success in implementing a higher standard of stroke care by ensuring that stroke patients receive treatment according to nationally accepted standards and recommendations.

“With a stroke, time lost is brain lost, and the GWTG–Stroke Silver Performance Achievement Award addresses the important element of time,” said Dr. Jennifer Pary, a vascular neurologist for the Center for Neurosciences, Orthopaedics and Spine, PC, and medical director for the Mercy Comprehensive Stroke Center. “Mercy has developed a comprehensive system for rapid diagnosis and treatment of stroke patients admitted to the emergency department. This includes always being equipped to provide brain imaging scans, having neurologists available to conduct patient evaluations and using clot-busting medications when appropriate.”

To receive the GWTG-Stroke Silver Performance Achievement Award, Mercy consistently complied for at least one year with the requirements in the GWTG–Stroke program. These include aggressive use of medications like tPA, antithrombotics, anticoagulation therapy, DVT prophylaxis, cholesterol reducing drugs, and smoking cessation. This twelve-month evaluation period is the second in an ongoing self-evaluation by the hospital to continually reach the 85 percent compliance level needed to sustain this award.

“The American Stroke Association commends Mercy Medical Center—Sioux City for its success in implementing standards of care and protocols,” said Lee H. Schwamm, M.D., national Get With the Guidelines Steering Committee Member and director of acute stroke services at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. “The full implementation of acute care and secondary prevention recommendations and guidelines is a critical step in saving the lives and improving outcomes of stroke patients.”

GWTG–Stroke uses the “teachable moment,” the time soon after a patient has had a stroke, when they are most likely to listen to and follow their healthcare professionals’ guidance. Studies demonstrate that patients who are taught how to manage their risk factors while still in the hospital reduce their risk of a second heart attack or stroke. Through GWTG–Stroke, customized patient education materials are made available at the point of discharge, based on patients’ individual risk profiles. The take-away materials are written in an easy-to-understand format and are available in English and Spanish. In addition, the GWTG Patient Management Tool provides access to up-to-date cardiovascular and stroke science at the point of care.

“The time is right for Mercy to be focused on improving the quality of stroke care by implementing GWTG–Stroke,” said Deb Motz, program manager for the Mercy Comprehensive Stroke Center. “The number of acute ischemic stroke patients eligible for treatment is expected to grow over the next decade due to increasing stroke incidence and a large aging population.”

Mercy Medical Center is the only hospital in the Siouxland region that has earned national certification as a stroke center from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), the nation’s oldest and largest standards-setting and accrediting body in health care.

Mercy is actively involved in national and international stroke research.

The hospital is one of 53 major medical centers in the U.S. and Canada and the only hospital in the Siouxland region recruiting patients for the “Siblings With Ischemic Stroke Study” or SWISS. Researchers at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., are leading the multicenter study, which is being funded by a grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). The objectives of the study are to detect human chromosomal regions of interest associated with ischemic stroke.

The American Stroke Association in collaboration with Duke Clinical Research Institute in 2006 invited Mercy to take part in the groundbreaking study, AVAIL (Adherence Evaluation After Ischemic Stroke Longitudinal Registry), to evaluate patient adherence to stroke prevention strategies.

According to the American Stroke Association, each year approximately 780,000 people suffer a stroke — 600,000 are first attacks and 180,000 are recurrent. Of stroke survivors aged 49 and older, 21 percent of men and 24 percent of women die within a year. For those aged 70 and older, the percentages are even higher.