Saint Agnes Hospital has received the American College of Cardiology Foundation's NCDR ACTION Registry�GWTG Gold Performance Achievement Award for 2009. The South Baltimore hospital is 1 of only 121 hospitals nationwide to do so. The award recognizes Saint Agnes' commitment and success in implementing a higher standard of care for heart attack patients, and signifies that the hospital has set an aggressive goal of treating coronary artery disease patients with 85% compliance to core standard levels of care outlined by the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association clinical guidelines and recommendations.
In order to receive the ACTION Registry�GWTG Gold Performance Achievement Award, Saint Agnes consistently followed the treatment guidelines in ACTION Registry�GWTG for 24 consecutive months. These include aggressive use of medications like cholesterol-lowering drugs, beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors, aspirin, and anticoagulants in the hospital.
"The American College of Cardiology Foundation and the American Heart Association commend Saint Agnes Hospital for its success in implementing standards of care and protocols," says Christopher Cannon, MD, ACTION Registry�GWTG Steering Committee Chairperson and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Associate Physician in the Cardiovascular Division at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
"The full implementation of acute and secondary prevention guideline-recommended therapy is a critical step in saving the lives and improving outcomes of heart attack patients," adds Gregg C. Fonarow, MD, ACTION Registry- GWTG Steering Committee Vice- Chairperson and Director of Ahmanson-UCLA Cardiomyopathy Center.
"The time is right for Saint Agnes to be focused on improving the quality of cardiovascular care by implementing ACTION Registry�GWTG. The number of acute myocardial infarction patients eligible for treatment is expected to grow over the next decade due to increasing incidence of heart disease and a large aging population," says Dr. Stephen Plantholt, Chief of Cardiology at Saint Agnes.
Created by the merger of the American College of Cardiology Foundation's NCDR ACTION Registry® and the American Heart Association's Get With The Guidelines-CAD program, ACTION Registry�GWTG combines the best of both programs into a single, unified national registry. The new registry joins the robust data collection and quality reporting features of the ACTION Registry with the collaborative models, unique tools, and quality improvement techniques of the GWTG-CAD program. With the collective strengths of these two programs, ACTION Registry�GWTG empowers health care provider teams to consistently treat heart attack patient according to the most current, science-based guidelines; and establishes a national standard for understanding and improving the quality, safety, and outcomes of care provided for patients with coronary artery disease, specifically high-risk STEMI and NSTEMI patients.
Saint Agnes Hospital is a 307-bed hospital founded by the Daughters of Charity in 1862.
Source: Dr. Stephen Plantholt, Saint Agnes
Writer: Walaika Haskins