Sierra Vista & Twin Cities Earn Stroke Gold Plus Awards

American Heart Association award recognizes hospitals’ commitments to quality stroke care

San Luis Obispo and Templeton, Calif. – Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center and Twin Cities Community Hospital both received the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines® - Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award. This award recognizes the hospitals’ commitments to leadership in stroke care in San Luis Obispo County and success in ensuring stroke patients receive the most appropriate treatment.

Sierra Vista and Twin Cities earned the award by meeting specific quality achievement measures for the diagnosis and treatment of stroke patients at a set level for a designated period. These measures include evaluation of the proper use of medications and other stroke treatments aligned with the most up-to-date, evidence-based guidelines with the goal of speeding recovery and reducing death and disability for stroke patients. The guidelines include aggressive use of medications such as clot-busting and anti-clotting drugs, blood thinners and cholesterol-reducing drugs, preventive action for deep vein thrombosis and smoking cessation counseling.

“Sierra Vista and Twin Cities are both dedicated to improving the quality of care for our stroke patients by implementing the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines-Stroke initiative,” said Mark Lisa, CEO of Sierra Vista and Twin Cities. “The tools and resources provided help us track and measure our success in meeting evidence-based clinical guidelines developed to improve patient outcomes.”

Both Sierra Vista and Twin Cities were the first two hospitals in San Luis Obispo County to be accredited as a Primary Stroke Center by The Joint Commission.

“We are pleased to recognize Sierra Vista and Twin Cities for their commitments to stroke care,” said Eric E. Smith, M.D., national chairman of the Get With The Guidelines Steering Committee and an associate professor of neurology at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. “Research has shown that hospitals adhering to clinical measures through the Get With The Guidelines quality improvement initiative can often see fewer readmissions and lower mortality rates.”

According to the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, stroke is the No. 5 cause of death and a leading cause of adult disability in the United States. On average, someone in the U.S. suffers a stroke every 40 seconds and nearly 795,000 people suffer a new or recurrent stroke each year.