HHC Harlem Hospital Center Receives National Recognition for Excellence in Stroke Care

Jun 12, 2015

New York, NY

Denise C. Soares, Senior Vice President Generations+/Northern Manhattan Health Network and Executive Director of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) Harlem Hospital Center, announced today the hospital has received the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s “Get With the Guidelines—Stroke Silver Plus Award.” The hospital also received the AHA/ASA’s “Get With The Guidelines®–Target: Stroke Honor Roll” award, highlighting success in ensuring stroke patients receive the most appropriate treatment according to nationally recognized, research-based guidelines based on the latest scientific evidence.

“The recognition of being on the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Honor Roll celebrates the extraordinary care Harlem Hospital Center provides to our patients,” said Ms. Soares. “The Village of Harlem has historically been a medically underserved community and we are proud to continuously provide life-saving comprehensive stroke care to our patients.”
To receive the Silver Plus Quality Achievement Award, hospitals must achieve 85 percent or higher adherence to all Get With The Guidelines achievement indicators for at least 12 consecutive months, and, during the same period, achieve 75 percent or higher compliance with five of eight Get With The Guidelines quality measures.
To achieve the “Target: Stroke Honor Roll,” hospitals must meet quality measures developed to reduce the time between the patient’s arrival at the hospital and treatment with the blood clot-busting medications approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat ischemic stroke. If given intravenously in the first three hours after the start of stroke symptoms, the medication, tPA, has been shown to significantly reduce the effects of stroke and lessen the chance of permanent disability.
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. Guidelines include aggressive use of medications such as clot-busting and anti-clotting drugs, and blood thinners. In addition, the guidelines promote prompt and effective use of cholesterol-reducing drugs, preventive action for deep vein thrombosis (DVT), and smoking cessation counseling. Stroke centers proactively manage other stroke risks such as hypertension and diabetes.
“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 Dennis Greenbaum, MD, Chief of Medicine. “Harlem Hospital Center is dedicated to improving the quality of stroke care and the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines-Stroke helps us achieve that goal.”
“Harlem Hospital Center has been a designated primary stroke center since 2007 and has developed a multi-disciplinary stroke team to quickly assess our stroke patients in the emergency room and decide if they are candidates for thrombolytic therapy,” said Anne Kleiman, D.O., Chief of Neurology. “We have complied with the guidelines set by the Department of Health and get assessed annually on our progress. This year we are proud to be award recipients as a designated stroke center for a Silver Plus award 2015. We have done an excellent job in achieving completion of the many clinical measures assessed in stroke care and look forward to providing this care for many more years to come.”
“We are pleased to recognize Harlem Hospital 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 and 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.”

Contact: Ian Michaels,(212) 788-3339 Philip D. Cooke, Harlem Hospital,(212) 939-1372

About NYC Health + Hospitals/Harlem

NYC Health + Hospitals/Harlem is a 282-bed hospital that provides a broad array of preventive, primary and acute care services including general medicine and medical subspecialties, general surgery and surgical subspecialties, infectious diseases, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics and neonatology; burn and critical care; radiology imaging and nuclear medicine; rehabilitation medicine and physical, speech and occupational therapies; psychiatry and substance abuse services; dental and oral surgery, and emergency adult and pediatric services. We are an Area-Wide Burn Center and Level I Trauma, with Centers of Excellence for Bariatric Surgery, Breast Imaging and Sexual Assault Forensics, a designated Stroke and AIDS Center, a World Health Organization’s UNICEF Designated Baby Friendly Hospital. NYC Health + Hospitals/Harlem is a member of the NYC Health + Hospitals health care system. For more information, visit www.nychealthandhospitals.org/harlem or call (212) 939-1000 .

About NYC Health + Hospitals

The NYC Health + Hospitals health care system is a $6.7 billion integrated healthcare delivery system, the largest municipal healthcare organization in the country, and one of the New York area’s largest providers of government-sponsored health insurance, MetroPlusHealth Health Plan, the plan of choice for nearly half a million New Yorkers. The NYC Health + Hospitals health care system serves 1.4 million New Yorkers every year and more than 475,000 are uninsured. The system provides medical, mental health and substance abuse services through its 11 acute care hospitals, five skilled nursing facilities, six large diagnostic and treatment centers and more than 70 community based clinics. NYC Health + Hospitals/Home Care also provides in-home services for New Yorkers. The NYC Health + Hospitals system was the 2008 recipient of the National Quality Forum and The Joint Commission’s John M. Eisenberg Award for Innovation in Patient Safety and Quality. For more information, visit www.nychealthandhospitals.org or find us on https://www.facebook.com/NYCHealthSystem or twitter.com/NYCHealthSystem.

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