EJGH Earns Fourth Consecutive AHA Gold Performance Award

The American Heart Association has just named EJGH’s cardiac heart failure program a Gold Performance Award for a fourth consecutive year through their Get With The Guidelines program. This award signifies outstanding clinical outcomes in treating patients diagnosed with heart failure. EJGH is the only hospital in our area to receive this award in heart failure for a fourth consecutive year.

East Jefferson General Hospital is proud of our continued excellence in cardiac care. This is such a special distinction for our physicians, nursing staff, and everyone throughout the organization. What makes this award so special is that it is based on how we administer care to our patients over the course of multiple years. That means we are consistently meeting or exceeding the standards set by one of the country’s most prominent organizations over an extended time frame.

“Earning the Gold Performance Award for a fourth consecutive year is an amazing honor,” says Ruby Brewer, RN, Senior Vice President, and Chief Quality Officer. “The American Heart Association sets extremely rigorous goals and benchmarks to ensure patients receive the highest quality of care. To meet their goals we must provide continued excellence on a daily basis. It is a wonderful credit to our organization that we exceed their criteria and remain a national leader in cardiac care.”2012 Gold Heart Failure American Heart Association Recognition

The Get With The Guidelines program is a quality improvement initiative that provides hospital staff with the tools that follow proven, evidence-based guidelines and procedures in caring for heart failure patients. Earning the Gold Performance Award means that a hospital has met the core standard levels of care developed by the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology for at least 24 consecutive months, and EJGH has accomplished this four times.

As defined by the American Heart Association, heart failure patients treated at getting With The Guidelines high-performing hospitals are started on aggressive therapies such as ace inhibitors, beta-blockers, diuretics, and anticoagulants while in the hospital. In addition, patients receive lower sodium diet counseling, smoking cessation advice, and other health education individual to their care.