Cheyenne Regional Medical Center Receives National Quality Awards for Stroke Care, Adult Resuscitation

July 24, 2019

Cheyenne, WY― The American Heart Association and American Stroke Association recently presented Cheyenne Regional Medical Center with the Get With The Guidelines^®—Target: Stroke Honor Roll Elite Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award and the Get With The Guidelines^®—Resuscitation Silver Award. This is the fourth year for Cheyenne Regional to receive a stroke care award and the first year for the hospital to receive a resuscitation award.

Get With The Guidelines is a national program that encourages participating hospitals to follow nationally recognized, research-based treatment guidelines to improve patient care and outcomes.

Stroke Award

Hospitals receiving the gold-level stroke award must achieve 85 percent or higher compliance with Get With The Guidelines-Stroke core standard levels of care for at least 24 consecutive months.

Quality measures that stroke gold plus-level hospitals must meet include the proper use of medications and other stroke treatments aligned with the most up-to-date guidelines with the goal of speeding recovery and reducing death and disability for stroke patients. Before being discharged from the hospital, stroke patients must also receive education on managing their health, receive other transition interventions and be scheduled for a follow-up visit with their healthcare provider.

The Target: Stroke Honor Roll Elite award is given to hospitals that meet quality measures that reduce the time between the patient’s arrival at the hospital and treatment with the clot-busting medication tissue plasminogen activator, tPA, the only drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat ischemic stroke.

“Cheyenne Regional Medical Center is dedicated to providing high-quality, evidence-based care to our stroke patients,” said Dr. Tracie Caller, a neurologist and the medical director of Cheyenne Regional’s stroke program. “Implementing Get With The Guidelines is one of the ways we ensure our stroke treatment protocols save lives and improve quality-of-life outcomes for our patients.”

Cheyenne Regional received the Get with the Guidelines^®-Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award in 2018, the silver-level award in 2017 and the bronze-level award in 2015.

Stroke is the fifth-leading cause of death and a leading cause of adult disability in the United States, according to the American Stroke Association/American Stroke Association. On average, someone in the United States suffers a stroke every 40 seconds, and nearly 795,000 people suffer a new or recurrent stroke each year.

Adult Resuscitation Award

To receive the Get With the Guidelines^®—Resuscitation Silver Award, Cheyenne Regional had to implement specific quality improvement measures outlined by the American Heart Association for the treatment of adult patients who suffer cardiac arrests in the hospital.

More than 200,000 adults and children have an in-hospital cardiac arrest each year, according to the American Heart Association. The Get With The Guidelines-Resuscitation program was developed with the goal of saving the lives of those who experience in-hospital cardiac arrests through consistently following the most up-to-date research-based guidelines for treatment. Guidelines include following protocols for patient safety, medical emergency team response, effective and timely cardiopulmonary resuscitation and post-resuscitation care.

Cheyenne Regional received the silver-level award for meeting the American Heart Association’s specific measures for treating in-hospital adult cardiac arrests for 12 consecutive months.

“We are committed to providing our patients the best possible outcomes,” said Minh Ho, chair of Cheyenne Regional’s interdisciplinary Code Blue Committee. “Maintaining these standards of care has helped us accomplish this by providing evidence-based knowledge and care to our patients experiencing an in-hospital cardiac arrest.”

“We are pleased to recognize Cheyenne Regional Medical Center for following these guidelines,” said Lee H. Schwamm, MD, national chairperson of the Quality Oversight Committee and executive vice chair of Neurology, director of Acute Stroke Services, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA. “Research has shown that for stroke care, hospitals adhering to clinical measures through the Get With The Guidelines improvement initiative can often see fewer readmissions and lower mortality rates. Additionally, shortening the time to effective resuscitation and maximizing post-resuscitation care is critical to patient survival.”

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.