Saint Luke’s Hospital receives Get with the Guidelines Silver Plus Quality Achievement Award

June 6, 2011 - PRLog -- KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Saint Luke’s Hospital of Kansas City has received the Get With The Guidelines®-Heart Failure Silver Plus Quality Achievement Award from the American Heart Association. The recognition signifies that Saint Luke’s has reached impressive benchmarks in the evidence-based treatment of heart failure patients.

Specifically, hospitals awarded the Get With The Guidelines-Heart Failure Silver Plus Quality Achievement Award have accomplished at least 12 consecutive months of 85 percent or higher adherence to all Get With The Guidelines-Heart Failure Quality Achievement indicators and at least 12 consecutive months of 75 percent or higher compliance with four of nine Get With The Guidelines-Heart Failure Quality Measures for the same reporting period, which are reporting initiatives to measure and improve quality of patient care and outcomes.

Get With The Guidelines is a quality improvement initiative that provides health care providers with tools that follow proven evidence-based guidelines and procedures in caring for heart failure patients to improve outcomes, prevent future hospitalizations and prolong lives.

Using 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.

Saint Luke’s established its heart failure program in 1998 and offers comprehensive services to patients at all stages of heart failure. The program utilizes a full range of treatments including transplantation and mechanical circulatory support. An active research program offers patients access to the latest treatment options for enhanced patient care. The program has earned nationwide acclaim for advances in early stage heart failure care, technological developments and ongoing education efforts.

“Saint Luke’s is dedicated to being among the best hospitals in the country in the care of heart failure patients,” said cardiologist Anthony Magalski, M.D., Saint Luke’s heart failure management program. “This recognition demonstrates that we are on the right track and will continue with aggressive implementation of the American Heart Association’s Get with the Guidelines-Heart Failure program.”

Get With The Guidelines-Heart Failure helps Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute’s staff develop and implement acute and secondary prevention guideline processes. The program provides hospitals with a web-based patient management tool, decision support, robust registry, real-time benchmarking capabilities and other performance improvement methodologies toward the goal of enhancing patient outcomes and saving lives.

This high-tech, evidence-based approach enables Saint Luke’s to improve the quality of care it provides heart failure patients, save lives and ultimately, reduce healthcare costs by avoiding re-hospitalization.

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.

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Saint Luke's Health System based in Kansas City, Mo., consists of 11 area hospitals in northwest Missouri and eastern Kansas, and several primary and specialty care practices. We provide a range of inpatient, outpatient and home care services.