New Hanover Regional Medical Center was awarded the Silver Plus Quality Achievement Award recently by the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, according to a news release.
 
The Silver Plus Quality Award is given to hospitals that achieve 85 percent or higher adherence to all “Get with the Guidelines-Stroke Achievement” indicators for at least 12 months and during the same period achieve 75 percent or higher compliance with five of eight “Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Quality” measures.
 
In addition, hospitals must demonstrate 75 percent compliance to seven out of 10 stroke quality measures during the 12-month period. New Hanover Regional’s composite score for all measures was 96 percent, according to the release.
 
New Hanover Regional was also named to the Target: Stroke Honor Roll, recognition given to hospitals that meet certain reductions in time between patient arrival and treatment with the clot-buster tissue plasminogen activator, the only drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat ischemic stroke.
 
New Hanover Regional median arrival-to-treatment time is 45 minutes, the release stated.

In a separate release, the medical center announced that its employees
donated $228,000 from their paychecks to the New Hanover Regional Foundation’s Employee Campaign this year.
 
The 2015 total broke the previous record for generosity to the annual compaign, which benefits patients and employees in need. Last year’s campaign yielded $176,000.
 
The hospital credited an increase in the number of participants for the growth, with 1,800 employees contributing, an increase of almost 50 percent from last year, the release stated.