The Medical Center at Bowling Green receives Get With The Guidelines®-Heart Failure Silver Plus Quality Achievement Award
The Medical Center at Bowling Green has received the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines®-Heart Failure Silver Plus Quality Achievement Award and the Target: Heart Failure Honor Roll. These awards recognize the hospital’s commitment to ensuring heart failure patients receive the most appropriate treatment according to nationally recognized, research-based guidelines founded in the latest scientific evidence. The ultimate goal is improving patient outcomes and quality of life as well as reducing the need for emergency department visits and hospital readmissions. The Medical Center is one of five Kentucky hospitals to receive a Get With The Guidelines-Heart Failure award.
The Medical Center at Bowling Green earned these awards by meeting specific quality achievement measures for the diagnosis and treatment of heart failure patients over 12 consecutive months. These measures include physician evaluation for the proper use of evidence-based heart failure medications and aggressive heart failure risk-reduction strategies. Before discharge, patients and their families also receive at least 60 minutes of education on managing their heart failure and overall health and get an early follow-up heart failure visit scheduled with their Primary Care Physician or Cardiologist, as well as other care transition interventions.
“Our goal,” said Jacqueline Dawson Dowe, MD, FACC, cardiologist with Western Kentucky Heart, Lung & Gastroenterology and chair of The Medical Center’s Heart Failure Workgroup, “was to implement a higher standard of care for both inpatients and outpatients by ensuring that every heart failure patient receives treatment that meets or exceeds nationally-accepted recommendations and standards. We also strive to create even more potential for improved patient outcomes by adding additional guideline-based steps for patient care. Receiving the AHA Silver Plus and Heart Failure Honor Roll is a milestone achievement for the hospital! Many thanks to the dedicated members on the Heart Failure Workgroup and to everyone in and outside the hospital who work daily to ensure that our heart failure patients are receiving the highest level of care.”
According to the American Heart Association, more than 6.5 million adults in the United States are living with heart failure. Many heart failure patients can lead a full, enjoyable life when their condition is managed with proper medications or devices and with healthy lifestyle changes.
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About Get With The Guidelines — Get With The Guidelines® is the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s hospital-based quality improvement program that provides hospitals with the latest research-based guidelines. Developed with the goal of saving lives and hastening recovery, Get With The Guidelines has touched the lives of more than 6 million patients since 2001. For more information, visit heart.org.
