Upstate earns top achievement awards for heart failure care
SYRACUSE, N.Y.-- Upstate University Hospital has earned the Get With The Guidelines® Heart Failure Gold Plus Quality Achievement award for implementation of quality improvement measures designated by the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology Foundation secondary prevention guidelines for heart failure patients. This is the fourth consecutive year that Upstate has received this honor.
Upstate University Hospital also received the association’s Target: Heart Failure Honor Roll for the first time.
“Upstate University Hospital is continuously working to improve the quality of care we give our heart failure patients,” said Lorrie Langdon, R.N., C.H.F.N., coordinator of the Upstate Heart Failure Program. “Implementing the guidelines set forth in this program means that latest and most respected standards, and also by giving us the opportunity to measure our success.”
Get With The Guidelines-Heart Failure is a quality improvement program that helps hospital teams provide the most up-to-date, research-based guidelines with the goal of speeding recovery and reducing hospital readmissions for heart failure patients. Launched in 2005, numerous published studies have demonstrated the program’s success in achieving patient outcome improvements, including reductions in 30-day readmissions.
Upstate earned the award by meeting specific quality achievement measures for the diagnosis and treatment of heart failure patients at a set level for a designated period. These measures include evaluation of the patient, proper use of medications and aggressive risk-reduction therapies. These would include ACE inhibitors/ARBs, beta-blockers, diuretics, anticoagulants, and other appropriate therapies. Before patients are discharged, they also receive education on managing their heart failure and overall health, get a follow-up visit scheduled, as well as other care transition interventions.
Target: Heart Failure is an initiative that provides hospitals with educational tools, prevention programs and treatment guidelines designed to reduce the risk of heart failure patients ending up back in the hospital. Hospitals are required to meet criteria that improves medication adherence, provides early follow-up care and coordination and enhances patient education. The goal is to reduce hospital readmissions and help patients improve their quality of life in managing this chronic condition.
“We are pleased to recognize Upstate for their commitment to heart failure care,” said Deepak L. Bhatt, M.D., M.PH., 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 at Harvard Medical School. “Studies have shown that hospitals that consistently follow Get With The Guidelines quality improvement measures can reduce patients’ length of stays and 30-day readmission rates and also reduce disparity gaps in care.”
According to the American Heart Association, about 5.7 million adults in the United States suffer from heart failure, with the number expected to rise to eight million by 2030. Statistics show that each year about 870,000 new cases are diagnosed and about 50 percent of those diagnosed will die within five years. However, many heart failure patients can lead a full, enjoyable life when their condition is managed with proper medications or devices and with healthy lifestyle changes.