New Hanover Regional Medical Center recently received recognition for how its providers treat stroke patients.

NHRMC accepted the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Silver Plus Quality Achievement Award with Target: StrokeSM Honor Roll.

The award “recognizes the hospital’s commitment and success ensuring that stroke patients receive the most appropriate treatment according to nationally recognized, research-based guidelines,” a news release said.

To receive the Silver Plus Quality Achievement Award, hospitals must achieve 85 percent or higher adherence to all Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Achievement indicators for at least 12 consecutive months. During the same period, hospitals must achieve 75 percent or higher compliance with five of eight Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Quality measures.

Hospitals must also demonstrate 75 percent compliance to seven out of 10 stroke quality measures during the 12-month period.

NHRMC’s composite score for all measures was 96 percent.

To qualify for the Target: StrokeSM Honor Roll, hospitals must meet quality measures developed to reduce the time between the patient’s arrival at the hospital and treatment with the clot-buster tissue plasminogen activator, or tPA, the only drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat ischemic stroke.

If given intravenously in the first three hours after the start of stroke symptoms, tPA has been shown to significantly reduce the effects of stroke and lessen the chance of permanent disability.

NHRMC 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, officials said. NHRMC’s median arrival to treatment time is 45 minutes.

The quality measures are designed to help hospital teams provide the most up-to-date, evidence-based guidelines with the goal of speeding recovery and reducing death and disability for stroke patients.

“With a stroke, time lost is brain lost, and this award demonstrates our commitment to ensuring patients receive care based on nationally respected clinical guidelines,” Kathleen Wiese, NHRMC stroke programs medical director, said in the release. 

NHRMC “is dedicated to improving the quality of stroke care and the American Heart Association/ American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines-Stroke helps us achieve that goal,” Wiese said.

Deepak L. Bhatt is national chairman of the Get With The Guidelines steering committee. Bhatt serves as executive director of interventional cardiovascular programs at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

“We are pleased to recognize NHRMC for their commitment to stroke care,” Bhatt said in the release. “Studies have shown that hospitals that consistently follow Get With The Guidelines quality improvement measures can reduce length of stay and 30-day readmission rates and reduce disparities in care.”

Stroke is the No. 5  cause of death and a leading cause of adult disability in the United States, according to the American Heart Association/ American Stroke Association. 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.