UC San Diego Medical Center has been recognized by the American Heart Association (AHA) with a Gold Performance Achievement Award for success in using evidence-based guidelines to provide the best possible care to cardiac patients. The AHA’s “Get With The Guidelines” program is a hospital-based quality-improvement initiative designed to ensure that hospitals consistently care for cardiac and stroke patients following the most up-to-date guidelines and recommendations.
“Evidenced-based treatments for coronary artery disease are extremely important in the application of lifesaving treatments,” said Ori Ben-Yehuda, MD, director of the Coronary Care Unit, UCSD Medical Center and associate clinical professor of medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine. “‘Get With The Guidelines’ assures that all patients are getting top care every day. We are proud to have achieved gold status.”
Hospitals are recognized in categories in which they achieve at least 85 percent compliance to “Get With The Guidelines” measures. Those hospitals marking 85 percent compliance for 24 consecutive months are given the Gold Performance Achievement Award.
“Healthcare providers who use ‘Get With The Guidelines’ are armed with the latest evidence-based guidelines and immediate access to clinical decision support, using a set of tools that have been shown to improve delivery of evidence-based care,” said Lee Schwamm, MD, national chairman of the “Get With The Guidelines” steering committee, associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and vice-chairman of neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital. “The goal of this initiative is to improve the quality of life and help reduce deaths and disability among patients with heart disease and stroke.”
According to the American Heart Association, cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, affecting more than 58 million Americans. More than 1.5 million new and recurrent heart attacks occur each year.
In October 2008, UCSD Medical Center placed the last steel beam on the Sulpizio Family Cardiovascular Center, the region’s first dedicated cardiovascular center scheduled to open in March 2011. The Center unites leaders in the fields of cardiovascular research, cardiology, and cardiothoracic surgery in a comprehensive approach to battle heart disease and stroke. Such interdisciplinary cooperation enables more patients to participate in clinical trials and to benefit sooner from new methods of prevention, diagnosis, and treatment.
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Media Contact: Jackie Carr, 619-543-6163, jcarr@ucsd.edu