Hospital Receives AHA’s Silver Plus Quality Achievement Award

Summa Western Reserve Hospital recently received the Silver Plus Quality Achievement award from "Get With The Guidelines®-Heart Failure," a quality improvement initiative from the American Heart Association. The award honors hospitals that have met or exceeded the AHA’s specific guidelines for treating heart failure. The hospital also won a Silver Plus distinction in 2011 and a Gold Plus distinction in 2012.

"Summa Western Reserve Hospital has made a continuous effort to provide the best patient care at the highest level　of quality, and we’re proud to receive this award confirming our success in reaching this exceptional goal," said Dr. Robert Kent, President and CEO, Summa Western Reserve Hospital. "Being honored for giving excellent patient care is the best recognition a hospital can receive."

Hospitals awarded Silver Plus Quality Achievement Award have accomplished at least 12 consecutive months of 85 percent or higher adherence to all of the program’s quality achievement indicators and at least 12 consecutive months of 75 percent or higher compliance with four of nine quality measures for the same reporting period.

The Get With The Guidelines-Heart Failure program also equips healthcare providers with tools that follow proven, evidence-based guidelines and procedures in caring for heart failure patients.

The program helps the hospital’s staff develop and implement acute and secondary prevention guideline processes to improve patient care and outcomes using a web-based patient management tool, best practice discharge protocols and standing orders, along with a robust registry and real-time benchmarking capabilities to track performance.

This high-tech, evidence-based approach enables Summa Western Reserve Hospital to improve the quality of care it provides to heart failure patients, lowering the recurrence of heart attacks, saving lives and reducing healthcare costs by avoiding re-hospitalization.

"Recent studies show that patients treated in hospitals participating in the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines-Heart Failure program receive a higher quality of care and may experience better outcomes," said Lee H. Schwamm, M.D., chair of Get With The Guidelines National Steering Committee and director of TeleStroke and Acute Stroke Services at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

According to the American Heart Association, about 5.7 million people suffer from heart failure. Each year, 670,000 new cases are diagnosed and more than 277,000 people die of heart failure.