Demonstrating Valley’s ongoing commitment to remarkable stroke care for our community, Valley has yet again achieved the American Heart and Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines® Target: Stroke Honor Roll Elite Plus Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award, its highest, most difficult to achieve honor. The award recognizes Valley’s dedication to ensuring stroke patients receive the most appropriate treatment according to nationally recognized, research-based guidelines based on the latest scientific evidence.”Stroke care is a team sport, and we have a great team here at Valley,” says Stroke Center Medical Director, Michael Previti, MD. “Our door-to-treatment times are low and have been improving every year for five years! We can now treat large vessel occlusions around the clock, and continue to work hard to ensure up-to-date, best practice care for our community.”
Neuro intervention team and services expanded, helping patients receive care closer to home
In October 2018 Ali Sultan-Qurraie, MD joined Peter Balousek, MD on our neuro intervention team. Valley also opened new angio, hybrid OR suites and biplane, allowing Valley to receive medic patients for suspected large vessel occlusion and neuro intervention. Joining a small number of medical centers in Washington state, Valley is now able to perform 24/7 neuro intervention.
Continuous quality improvement
Through monthly Stroke Committee meetings, ED stroke meetings and sub-group meetings, the performance metrics for administering IV alteplase (tPA) and providing neuro intervention are monitored. Recent improvements include:
- New stroke care algorithms for inpatient units and the ED
- Updated stroke order sets
- Burst paging system to ensure patients get the necessary care quickly and efficiently
- New monitoring dashboard
What else is the team working on?
The stroke team is in the process of pursuing Joint Commission Disease Specific Certification as a Thrombectomy-Capable Stroke Center by the end of this year.
“From our public education outreach,” says Dr. Previti, “to the fire department we work with for pre-hospital identification and transport, our emergency room staff who continues to refine an ever-moving process, to the multi-disciplinary effort required to coordinate acute stroke care and do ongoing, quality improvement, to the ICU and stroke unit monitoring and education, to the transition of care for rehabilitation, follow up, and ultimately secondary stroke prevention, we have an amazing team, and I am proud to work with each of them.
“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 tools and resources to increase adherence to 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.
