Lakeview Regional Medical center receives quality achievement

Lakeview Hospital ’s Primary Stroke Center has received the Get With The Guidelines®–Stroke Silver Quality Achievement Award for implementing specific quality improvement measures outlined by the American Heart/Association Stroke Association for the treatment of stroke patients. This marks the 2nd year Lakeview Regional has been recognized with a quality achievement award.

“The care our patients receive at Lakeview Regional is our number one priority,” states Ramy El Khoury, MD, Stroke Medical Director at Lakeview Hospital Stroke Program. “Our team of physicians, nurses, and support staff demonstrates its commitment to ensure that our patients receive care based on internationally-respected clinical guidelines.” The medical team at Lakeview Hospital follows a highly specific, formal protocol that gives stroke patients priority access when seconds count, greatly reducing the potential damage to brain cells. “This award reinforces our commitment to providing a level of stroke care that ranks among the best hospitals in the country,” states Bret Kolman, Lakeview Regional Chief Executive Officer. “We are honored to be among these hospitals recognized by the American Heart/American Stroke Association.”“Receiving this ‘A’ grade in safety requires a tremendous amount of commitment from the entire Lakeview Regional staff and exhibits the high priority we place on our patients,” states Bret Kolman, Lakeview Regional Chief Executive Officer. “I commend our employees for their dedication and integrity in being the only hospital on the Northshore to reach this achievement.”

To qualify for the Get With The Guidelines®–Stroke program award Lakeview Hospital had to meet specific quality achievement measures for the rapid diagnosis and treatment of stroke patients at a set level for a designated period. These measures include proper use of medications and aggressive risk-reduction therapies aimed at reducing death and disability and improving the lives of stroke “Patient safety needs to be a 24-7 priority for hospitals, as errors and infections are all too common and often deadly,” said Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group. “We applaud the ‘A’ hospitals, including Lakeview Regional for helping us to raise the standards of health care nationwide, and demonstrating that they’ve made the well-being of patients a top priority.”

According to the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, stroke is the number four cause of death and a leading cause of adult disability in the United States. On average, someone suffers a stroke every 40 seconds; someone dies of a stroke every four minutes; and 795,000 people suffer a new or recurrent stroke each year. Get With The Guidelines–Stroke program helps hospital teams provide the most up-to-date, research-based guidelines with the goal of speeding recovery and reducing death and disability for stroke patientsDeveloped under the guidance of Leapfrog’s Blue Ribbon Expert Panel, the Hospital Safety Score uses 28 measures of publicly available hospital safety data to produce a single “A,” “B,” “C,” “D,” or “F” score representing a hospital’s overall capacity to keep patients safe from preventable harm. More than 2,500 U.S. general hospitals were assigned scores in fall 2014. The Hospital Safety Score is fully transparent, with a full analysis of the data and methodology used in determining grades available online.