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2004 Press Releases
Rome Memorial Hospital implements
American Heart Association’s Get With The
Guidelines-Coronary
Artery Disease program
Initiative designed to
prevent secondary cardiovascular events and stroke
ROME —
Rome Memorial Hospital is
participating in the American Heart Association’s Get
With The GuidelinesSM program to enhance
the quality of care given to coronary artery disease
patients, announced President/Chief Executive Officer
Darlene Burns, MS, RN.
“This program provides us
with additional tools to help us refine our protocols to
ensure that we are using the latest evidence-based
guidelines and procedures to care for our cardiac
patients,” Mrs. Burns said. “In addition to proven
standardized guidelines, the program includes a data
collection tool to monitor progress and ensure
consistency of care.”
The quality improvement
initiative is designed to reduce the risk of recurrent
heart attacks by helping hospital staff follow proven
evidence-based guidelines and procedures while coronary
patients are in their care.
Under the program,
coronary patients are started on aggressive risk
reduction therapies such as cholesterol-lowering drugs,
aspirin, ACE inhibitors and beta-blockers in the
hospital and receive smoking cessation and weight
management counseling and referrals for cardiac
rehabilitation before being discharged. These standards
of care are outlined in the American Heart
Association/American College of Cardiology secondary
prevention guidelines for patients with coronary artery
disease.
“The full implementation
of secondary prevention guidelines is a critical step in
saving the lives of coronary patients,” said Gray
Ellrodt, MD., American Heart Association volunteer
chairman for the national Get With The Guidelines
project. “The American Heart Association’s Get With
The Guidelines program is designed to help hospitals
like Rome Memorial Hospital implement
appropriate evidence-based guidelines for care and
protocols that will reduce the number of recurrent
events and death in these patients.”
According to the American
Heart Association, more than 450,000 people suffer
recurrent heart attacks each year. Statistics also show
that within six years after a heart attack, about 22
percent of men and 46 percent of women will be disabled
with heart failure. Within one year of an attack, 25
percent of men and 38 percent of women will die.
Research indicates that
when patients are discharged from the hospital on
appropriate medications such as aspirin, beta-blockers,
ACE inhibitors and lipid-lowering medicines, a patient’s
risk of a second event is reduced and lives are saved.
“I am very passionate and
enthusiastic about this initiative because it will
ensure that our heart patients receive the best possible
care,” said critical care nurse Tina Shortt, CCRN, RN,
who is champion for the hospital’s Get With The
Guidelines initiative. Shortt has been a critical
care nurse for 17 years. “Get With The Guidelines
enables research-based practices to be at our fingertips
so physicians can make the best decisions for their
patients,” she said.
The other Rome Memorial
Hospital healthcare professionals that comprise the
implementation team include Sandra Richardson, CCRN, RN;
Richard Simpson, CCRN, RN; Terry Ann Goodwin, RN; and
Rita Hoffman, CCRN, RN.
“Implementation of Get
With the Guidelines is also looked at very favorably
by accrediting bodies such as the Joint Commission on
Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), the
Department of Health and the Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services because it measures the level of care
that we provide to our patients,” said Shortt.
Get With The Guidelines
is designed to help Rome Memorial Hospital’s staff
develop and implement a secondary prevention guideline
process. The program includes quality improvement
measures such as care maps, discharge protocols and
measurement tools. Designed to be quick and efficient,
these guideline tools will enable Rome Memorial Hospital to improve the
quality of care it provides cardiac patients, save lives
and ultimately, reduce healthcare costs by lowering the
recurrence of heart attacks.
According to the American
Heart Association, projections have shown that if the
Get With The Guidelines-CAD program was implemented
nationwide, more than 80,000 lives could be saved each
year.
The American Heart
Association program, developed with support from an
unrestricted educational grant from Merck & Co., Inc.,
is being implemented in hospitals around the country.
For more information on Get With The Guidelines,
visit
www.americanheart.org/getwiththeguidelines.
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