Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center (PBGMC) recently was the recipient of a Level Three Annual Performance Achievement Award, the highest level of achievement, from the American Heart Association for its Get With The GuidelinesSM program, which signifies the hospital has sustained high adherence levels for one calendar year. PBGMC is the first and only hospital in Florida to achieve this level of recognition.
The Get With The GuidelinesSM program is the premier hospital-based quality improvement program for the American Heart Association and the American Stroke Association. It is designed to empower healthcare workers to consistently treat patients with the most updated treatment guidelines. This award recognizes PBGMC’s commitment and success in implementing a higher standard of cardiac care that effectively improves treatment of patients hospitalized with coronary artery disease.
Get With The GuidelinesSM is designed to help develop and implement a secondary prevention guideline process. The program includes quality-improvement measures such as care maps, discharge protocols, standing orders, and measurement tools. Under the Get With The GuidelinesSM program, patients are started on aggressive risk reduction therapies such as cholesterol-lowering drugs, aspirin, ACE inhibitors and beta-blockers in the hospital and receive smoking cessation and weight management counseling and referrals for cardiac rehabilitation before they are discharged. Designed to be quick and efficient, these guideline tools enable PBGMC to improve the quality of care it provides cardiac patients. This care saves lives and ultimately reduces healthcare costs by lowering the recurrence of heart attacks.
“Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center is dedicated to making our cardiac unit among the best in the country, and the American Heart Association’s Get With The GuidelinesSM program is helping us accomplish that by making it easier for our professionals to improve the long-term outcomes of our cardiac patients,” said hospital CEO Mary Jo Gregory. “We are pleased to be recognized for our dedication and achievements in cardiac care.”