UC San Diego Health System, along with 267 hospitals nationwide, received the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines® Gold Performance Achievement Award for using evidence-based guidelines to provide the best possible heart disease and stroke care to patients.
“The ‘Get With The Guidelines’ program is key to making sure we take care of each and every patient in the best manner possible,” said Ori Ben-Yehuda, MD, professor of medicine and Director of the Coronary Care Unit at UC San Diego Health System. “Receiving Gold recognition from the American Heart Association demonstrates that we are consistently adhering to quality care guidelines.”
Get With The Guidelines is a hospital-based quality-improvement program designed to ensure that hospitals consistently care for cardiac and stroke patients following the most up-to-date guidelines and recommendations. The program addresses coronary artery disease, heart failure and stroke. Currently more than 1,400 hospitals participate in the program.
UC San Diego Health System received Gold distinction in 2008, 2009 and 2010; Silver in 2007, and Bronze in 2006. “With these processes in place, we are able to insure that nothing is missed,” explained Ben-Yehuda. “And since UC San Diego is an academic medical center, we are not only taking care of today’s patients, but also tomorrow’s – training the doctors of the future to get it right from the start.”
Hospitals recognized in each category achieve at least 85 percent compliance to Get With The Guidelines measures. Those achieving 85 percent compliance for 24 consecutive months – as UC San Diego Health System did – receive the Gold Performance Achievement Award.
“The American Heart Association is pleased to recognize its top Get With The Guidelines participants,” 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. “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. 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.”
For more information about the program, please visit:
www.americanheart.org/getwiththeguidelines
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About UC San Diego Health System:
UC San Diego Health System has been in operation since 1966 and comprises the system of patient services provided at the UC San Diego Medical Center – Hillcrest; Thornton Hospital, Moores Cancer Center; Shiley Eye Center and the Sulpizio Family Cardiovascular Center scheduled to open in 2001, as well as other primary and specialty practices of the UC San Diego Medical Group located throughout San Diego County. The two hospitals operate under one license with a combined licensed capacity of 548 beds. As the only university health system in San Diego County and the region’s only academic medical center, its role is to take exceptional care of people by providing excellent and compassionate patient care, advancing medical discoveries and educating the health care professionals of tomorrow.
About Get With The Guidelines
Get With The Guidelines® is the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s hospital-based quality improvement program that empowers healthcare teams to save lives and reduce healthcare costs by helping hospitals follow evidence-based guidelines and recommendations. For more information, visit
heart.org/quality.
Media Contact: Kim Edwards, 619-543-6163, kedwards@ucsd.edu