West Hospital Earns Top Quality Award for Heart Failure Care

Mercy Health - Cincinnati, which provides advanced, compassionate, quality care in your neighborhood through its care network, announces that West Hospital has received the Get With The Guidelines®-Heart Failure Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award for implementing specific quality improvement measures outlined by the American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology Foundation’s secondary prevention guidelines for patients with heart failure. The AHA/ACA also named West Hospital to the Target: Heart Failure Honor Roll

This marks the third year in a row that the AHA/ACA has recognized West Hospital with a quality achievement award.

“When West Hospital opened four years ago, the heart care team dedicated itself to providing the best quality care for our heart failure patients. We implemented the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines-Heart Failure program to help us to accomplish this goal by tracking and measuring our success in meeting internationally-respected guidelines. I congratulate the team for its singular focus, which earned us this top honor and more importantly, ensures our patients have the best evidence-based care possible,” said Michael Kramer, Mercy Health - West Market President and CEO.

Get With The Guidelines-Heart Failure is a quality improvement program that helps hospital teams follow the most up-to-date, research-based standards with the goal of speeding recovery and reducing hospital readmissions for heart failure patients. Launched in 2005, numerous published studies have demonstrated the program’s success in achieving patient outcome improvements, including reductions in 30-day readmissions.

West Hospital earned the award by meeting specific quality achievement measures for the diagnosis and treatment of heart failure patients. These measures include evaluation of the patient, proper use of medications and aggressive risk-reduction therapies, such as ACE inhibitors/ARBs, beta-blockers, diuretics, anticoagulants and other appropriate therapies. Before discharge, patients also receive education on managing their heart failure and overall health and schedule their follow-up visit, as well as other care transition interventions.

West Hospital also received the association’s Target: Heart FailureSM Honor Roll. Target: Heart Failure is an initiative that provides hospitals with educational tools, prevention programs and treatment guidelines designed to reduce the risk of heart failure patients ending up back in the hospital. Hospitals are required to meet criteria that improves medication adherence, provides early follow-up care and coordination and enhances patient education. The goal is to reduce hospital readmissions and help patients improve their quality of life in managing this chronic condition.

“We are pleased to recognize Mercy Health - West Hospital for its commitment to heart failure care,” said Paul Heidenreich, MD, MS, national chairman of the Get With The Guidelines Steering Committee and Professor of Medicine at Stanford University. “Research has shown there are benefits to patients who are treated at hospitals that have adopted the Get With The Guidelines program. Get With the Guidelines research has demonstrated the impact of lowering 30-day readmissions and reducing mortality rates.”

According to the American Heart Association, about 5.7 million adults in the United States suffer from heart failure, with the number expected to rise to eight million by 2030. Statistics show that each year about 870,000 new cases are diagnosed and about 50 percent of those diagnosed will die within five years. However, 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.

The AHA/ACA has also recognized Mercy Health – Anderson and Fairfield Hospitals for excellence in heart failure care.

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.