Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute Awarded Get With The Guidelines Heart Failure Gold-Plus Quality Achievement Award
Kansas City, Mo (PRWEB) November 21, 2014 -- Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute has received the Get With The Guidelines®–Heart Failure Gold-Plus Quality Achievement Award for implementing specific quality improvement measures outlined by the American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology Foundation in their secondary prevention guidelines for heart failure patients.
Get With The Guidelines–Heart Failure is a quality improvement program that helps hospital teams provide the most up-to-date, research-based guidelines with the goal of speeding recovery and reducing hospital readmissions for heart failure patients.
Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute earned the award from the American Heart Association and the American Stroke Association by achieving 85 percent or higher adherence to all Get with the Guidelines–Heart Failure Performance Achievement indicators for consecutive 12 month intervals and 75 percent or higher compliance on at least four of the Get with the Guidelines–Heart Failure Quality Measures to improve quality of patient care and outcomes. These measures include proper use of medications and aggressive risk-reduction therapies such as cholesterol-lowering drugs, beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors, aspirin, diuretics, and anticoagulants while patients are in the hospital. Before patients are discharged, they also receive education on managing their heart failure and overall health, as well as referrals for cardiac rehabilitation.
“Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute is dedicated to improving the quality of care for our heart failure patients, and implementing the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines–Heart Failure program helps us to accomplish this goal by tracking and measuring our success in meeting internationally respected guidelines,” said Anthony Magalski, M.D., Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute heart failure medical director and board-certified cardiologist.
The Joint Commission, in conjunction with The American Heart Association, also recently recognized Saint Luke’s Hospital with Advanced Certification in Heart Failure. Achievement of this certification signifies an organization’s dedication to fostering better outcomes for patients in its heart failure program.
Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute launched its heart failure program in 1998 with a comprehensive approach to treating heart failure which emphasizes patient engagement and self-management techniques as well as outpatient follow-up and coordination of care. Inpatient care is provided by an expert heart failure team comprised of six heart failure cardiologists, all of whom are certified in Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant Cardiology through the American Board of Internal Medicine.
The Saint Luke’s Heart Failure Program also features:
• Early-stage heart failure management, which utilizes aggressive medical management to optimize cardiac function and efficiency and thoughtful evaluation of any corrective surgical or device therapy that may be appropriate.
• Comprehensive management and follow-up care for advanced heart failure and high-risk heart failure patients.
• The only full spectrum of surgical support for advanced heart failure in the region including extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), mechanical assist devices (VAD), and heart transplantation.
• Management of complex congenital heart disease patients who are at risk to develop heart failure as adults.
• A cardiopulmonary exercise laboratory dedicated to evaluating patient therapy and functional capacity.
• Full-time research nurses who screen and enroll heart failure patients in more than 10 active protocols.
“We are pleased to recognize Saint Luke’s Hospital for their commitment to heart failure care,” said Deepak L. Bhatt, M.D., MPH, national chairman of the Get With The Guidelines steering committee and executive director of Interventional Cardiovascular Programs at Brigham and Women's Hospital and pProfessor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “Studies have shown that hospitals that consistently follow Get With The Guidelines quality improvement measures can reduce patients’ length of stays and 30-day readmission rates and also reduce disparity gaps in care.”
According to the American Heart Association, about 5.1 million people suffer from heart failure. Each year, 670,000 new cases are diagnosed and more than 275,000 people will die of heart failure. However, many heart failure patients can lead a full life when their condition is managed with proper medications and devices and with healthy lifestyle changes.
About Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute
Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute, a member of Saint Luke’s Health System and a teaching affiliate of the University of Missouri-Kansas City, is one of the preeminent cardiovascular programs in the country. Its legacy of innovation began more than 25 years ago when it opened as the nation’s first heart hospital. Since then, the Heart Institute has earned a world-wide reputation for excellence in the treatment of heart disease, including interventional cardiology, cardiovascular surgery, imaging, heart failure, transplant, heart disease prevention, women’s heart disease, electrophysiology, cardiac imaging, outcomes research, and health economics. With more than 50 full-time board-certified cardiovascular specialists on staff, the Heart Institute offers one of the largest heart failure/heart transplant programs in the country, has the largest experience with transcatheter aortic valve replacement in the Midwest, and is a global teaching site for the newest approaches to opening challenging blocked arteries using minimally invasive techniques.
About Get With The Guidelines
Get With The Guidelines® is the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s hospital-based quality improvement program that provides hospitals with 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 4 million patients since 2001. For more information, visit heart.org/quality or heart.org/myhealthcare.
Laurel Gifford, Saint Luke's Health System, +1 (816) 502-8532, [email protected]
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