Silver Recognition for Excellence
Carteret General Hospital has received the Get With The Guidelines®–Heart Failure Silver Quality Achievement Award from the American Heart Association. This is a designation that is published in US News & World Report and lists hospitals nationwide who have achieved excellence in management and care of stroke and/or heart failure. It is an effort sponsored jointly with the American Heart Association and the American Stroke Association in conjunction with US News and World Report.
Carteret General Hospital is recognized for meeting or exceeding very high standards for heart failure management over 85% of the time over a twelve-month period. Results such as this do not happen by accident but rather reflect the concerted efforts of a dedicated team of professionals. In this case, these include our Cardiologists, Hospitalists, the nursing staff from CCU and PCU, the Cardiopulmonary Staff, the Emergency Department physicians and staff, and the Quality Department.
Get With The Guidelines is a quality improvement initiative that provides hospital staff with tools that follow proven evidence-based guidelines and procedures in caring for heart failure patients to prevent future hospitalizations. According to Get With The Guidelines–Heart Failure treatment guidelines, heart failure patients are started on aggressive risk-reduction therapies such as cholesterol-lowering drugs, beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors, aspirin, diuretics and anticoagulants in the hospital. They also receive alcohol/drug use and thyroid management counseling as well as referrals for cardiac rehabilitation before being discharged.
“The full implementation of national heart failure guideline recommended care is a critical step in preventing recurrent hospitalizations and prolonging the lives of heart failure patients,” said Lee H. Schwamm, M.D., chair of the Get With The Guidelines National Steering Committee and director of the TeleStroke and Acute Stroke Services at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Mass. “The goal of the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines program is to help hospitals like Carteret General implement appropriate evidence-based care and protocols that will reduce disability and the number of deaths in these patients. Published scientific studies are providing us with more and more evidence that Get With The Guidelines works. Patients are getting the right care they need when they need it. That’s resulting in improved survival.”
“Carteret General is dedicated to making our care for heart failure patients among the best in the country. We will continue in our efforts and build off the success of this award by continued implementation of the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines—Heart Failure program that allowed us to accomplish this goal,” said Donna Cheek, VP Patient Care Services.
Get With The Guidelines—Heart Failure helps Carteret General’s staff develop and implement acute and secondary prevention guideline processes. The program includes quality-improvement measures such as care maps, discharge protocols, standing orders and measurement tools. This quick and efficient use of guideline tools will enable Carteret General Hospital to improve the quality of care it provides heart failure patients, save lives and ultimately, reduce healthcare costs by lowering the recurrence of heart attacks.
According to the American Heart Association, about 5.7 million people suffer from heart failure. Statistics also show that, each year, 670,000 new cases are diagnosed and more than 277,000 people will die of heart failure.
There are no other eastern North Carolina hospitals included in this exclusive list with the exception of the academic medical center at Pitt County Memorial Hospital.
This publication recognizes hospitals at the Gold Plus, Gold, Silver and Bronze levels in both stroke and heart failure. Carteret joins such other nationally recognized hospitals as Duke University Hospital, Wake Forest Medical Center and Forsyth Medical Center and as such we are in a very prestigious group.