Posted: 6/1/2016
Parkland 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 (AHA)/American College of Cardiology Foundation’s secondary prevention guidelines for patients with heart failure.
This marks the first year that Parkland has been recognized with the Gold Plus designation, the AHA’s highest quality achievement award.
Get With The Guidelines-Heart Failure is a quality improvement program that helps hospital teams follow the most up-to-date, research-based standards with the goal of speeding recovery and reducing hospital readmissions for heart failure patients. Launched in 2005, numerous published studies have demonstrated the program’s success in achieving patient outcome improvements, including reductions in 30-day readmissions.
Parkland earned the award by meeting specific quality achievement measures for the diagnosis and treatment of heart failure patients. These measures include evaluation of the patient, proper use of medications and aggressive risk-reduction therapies, such as ACE inhibitors/ARBs, beta-blockers, diuretics, anticoagulants, and other appropriate therapies. Before patients are discharged, they also receive education on managing their heart failure and overall health, get a follow-up visit scheduled, as well as other care transition interventions.
“Parkland 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. I’m very proud of the commitment from all our providers to continually improving care for our patients,” said Sandeep R. Das, MD, MPH, FACC, FAHA, Director of Acute Coronary Care and Associate Chief Quality and Safety Officer at Parkland and Associate Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.
“This recognition marks the culmination of several years of concerted effort to implement quality improvement objectives by Parkland caregivers in cardiology, internal medicine, IT, pharmacy, and others,” said Lisa Mack, BSN, RN, Project Coordinator, Medicine Division at Parkland.
“We are pleased to recognize Parkland Memorial Hospital for their commitment to heart failure care,” said Paul Heidenreich, MD, MS, national chairman of the Get With The Guidelines Steering Committee and Professor of Medicine at Stanford University. “Research has shown there are benefits to patients who are treated at hospitals that have adopted the Get With The Guidelines program. Get With the Guidelines research has demonstrated the impact of lowering 30-day readmissions and reducing mortality rates.”
According to the AHA, about 5.7 million adults in the United States suffer from heart failure, with the number expected to rise to 8 million by 2030. Statistics show that each year about 870,000 new cases are diagnosed and about 50 percent of those diagnosed will die within five years. However, many heart failure patients can lead a full, enjoyable life when their condition is managed with proper medications or devices and with healthy lifestyle changes.
Learn more about Get With The Guidelines and Heart health at Parkland.