CarePoint Health - Bayonne Medical Center Receives Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Bronze Quality Achievement Award

BAYONNE, N.J., March 24, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- CarePoint Health – Bayonne Medical Center has received the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association's Get With The Guidelines^®-Stroke Bronze Quality Achievement Award. The award recognizes the hospital's commitment and success in ensuring stroke patients receive the most appropriate treatment according to nationally recognized, research-based guidelines based on the latest scientific evidence.

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To receive the Bronze Quality Achievement award, hospitals must achieve 85 percent or higher adherence to all Get With The Guidelines-Stroke achievement indicators for one calendar quarter.

These quality measures are designed to help hospital teams provide the most up-to-date, evidence-based guidelines with the goal of speeding recovery and reducing death and disability for stroke patients. They focus on appropriate use of guideline-based care for stroke patients, including aggressive use of medications such as clot-busting and anti-clotting drugs, blood thinners and cholesterol-reducing drugs, preventive action for deep vein thrombosis and smoking cessation counseling.

CarePoint Health - Bayonne Medical Center has also met specific scientific guidelines as a Primary Stroke Center, featuring a comprehensive system for rapid diagnosis and treatment of stroke patients.

"With a stroke, time lost is brain lost, and this award demonstrates our commitment to ensuring patients receive care based on nationally-respected clinical guidelines," said  CarePoint Health - Bayonne Medical Center Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Vijayant Singh.  "CarePoint Health Bayonne Medical Center is dedicated to improving the quality of stroke care and our collaboration with the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association's Get With The Guidelines-Stroke helps us achieve that goal."

"We are pleased to recognize CarePoint Health Bayonne Medical Center for their commitment to stroke care," said Deepak L. Bhatt, M.D., M.P.H., national chairman of the Get With The Guidelines steering committee, Executive Director of Interventional Cardiovascular Programs at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. "Studies have shown that hospitals that consistently follow Get With The Guidelines quality improvement measures can reduce length of stay and 30-day readmission rates and reduce disparities in care."

For providers, Get With The Guidelines-Stroke offers quality-improvement measures, discharge protocols, standing orders and other measurement tools. Providing hospitals with resources and information that make it easier to follow treatment guidelines can help save lives and ultimately reduce overall healthcare costs by lowering readmission rates for stroke patients.

For patients, Get With The Guidelines-Stroke uses the "teachable moment," the time soon after a patient has had a stroke, when they learn how to manage their risk factors while still in the hospital and recognize the F.A.S.T. warning signs of a stroke.

According to the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, stroke is the number five cause of death and a leading cause of adult disability in the United States. On average, someone suffers a stroke every 40 seconds; someone dies of a stroke every four minutes; and 795,000 people suffer a new or recurrent stroke each year.

About CarePoint Health
CarePoint Health brings quality, patient-focused health care to Hudson County. Combining the resources of three area hospitals – Bayonne Medical Center, Christ Hospital in Jersey City, and Hoboken University Medical Center – CarePoint Health provides a new approach to deliver health care that puts the patient front and center. We leverage a network of top doctors, nurses and other medical professionals whose expertise and attentiveness work together to provide complete coordination of care, from the doctor's office to the hospital to the home. Patients benefit from the expertise and capabilities of a broad network of leading specialists and specialized technology. And at CarePoint Health, all of our medical professionals emphasize preventive medicine and focus on educating patients to make healthy life choices. For more information on our facilities, partners and services, visit our website, www.carepointhealth.org.

For Media Inquiries, Contact:

Jarrod Bernstein
CarePoint Health
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 201-884-5300

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 5 million patients since 2001. For more information, visit heart.org/quality or heart.org/QualityMap.

SOURCE CarePoint Health