PRESS RELEASE: All four Saint Luke's Metro Hospitals honored by American Heart Association and American Stroke Association for excellence in stroke care

The four Saint Luke’s metro hospitals were honored by the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association for excellence in the quick and safe treatment of stroke patients for 2016. The hospitals received Get With The Guidelines® honors, recognizing commitment to providing the most appropriate stroke treatment, with the goal of speeding recovery and reducing death and disability for stroke patients.

Saint Luke’s Hospital of Kansas City achieved the most prestigious honors for stroke programs awarded by the organization, the Get With The Guidelines® Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award and the Target: Stroke Honor Roll Elite Plus. The award recognizes 85 percent or higher adherence to quality indicators for two or more years, and measures to increase the speed of administering clot-busting tPA.

The organization also recognized Saint Luke’s other metro hospitals for quality and speed: 

  • Saint Luke’s East Hospital – Get With The Guidelines® Stroke Gold Quality Achievement Award with Target: Stroke Honor Roll Elite
  • Saint Luke’s North Hospital – Get With The Guidelines® Stroke Silver Plus Quality Achievement Award with Target: Stroke Honor Roll Elite Plus
  • Saint Luke’s South Hospital – Get With The Guidelines® Stroke Silver Plus Quality Achievement Award with Target: Stroke Honor Roll

“These prestigious honors are given based on internationally respected clinical guidelines, and they are difficult for a stroke center to achieve,” said Karin Olds., M.D., medical director of the Stroke Program at Saint Luke’s Marion Bloch Neuroscience Institute. “We are honored to receive them, and recognize that these awards come as a result of the commitment and dedication of our stroke team, which focuses on attaining this high goal and consistently providing the very best care for our patients.”   

A stroke patient loses 1.9 million neurons each minute treatment is delayed during a stroke. 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, someone dies of a stroke every four minutes, and nearly 800,000 people suffer a new or recurrent stroke each year.

“The American Heart Association and American Stroke Association recognize Saint Luke’s Health System for its commitment to stroke care,” said Paul Heidenreich, M.D., M.S., national chairman of the Get With The Guidelines Steering Committee and Professor of Medicine at Stanford University. “Research has shown there are benefits to patients who are treated at hospitals that have adopted the Get With The Guidelines program.”

Saint Luke’s Health System consists of 10 area hospitals and several primary and specialty care practices, and provides a range of inpatient, outpatient, and home care services. Founded as a faith-based, not-for-profit organization, our mission includes a commitment to the highest levels of excellence in health care and the advancement of medical research and education. The health system is an aligned organization in which the physicians and hospitals assume responsibility for enhancing the physical, mental, and spiritual health of people in the metropolitan Kansas City area and the surrounding region.

Get With The Guidelines® is the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s hospital-based quality improvement program that provides hospitals with tools and resources to increase adherence to the latest research-based guidelines. Developed with the goal of saving lives and hastening recovery, Get With The Guidelines has touched the lives of more than 6 million patients since 2001. For more information, visit heart.org.