Edward Hospital (IL) earns national recognition for heart failure program

Edward Hospital has received the Get With The Guidelines-Heart Failure Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award from the American Heart Association (AHA) for its excellence in the treatment of patients with heart failure.

This award is given only to hospitals that achieve 85 percent or higher adherence to all Get With The Guidelines-Heart Failure Quality Achievement indicators for two or more consecutive 12-month intervals and have achieved 75 percent or higher compliance with four of nine Get With The Guidelines-Heart Failure Quality Measures to improve quality of patient care and outcomes.

Get With The Guidelines is a quality improvement initiative that provides hospital staff with tools that follow proven evidence-based guidelines and procedures in caring for heart failure patients to improve outcomes, prevent future hospitalizations and prolong life.

Under Get With The Guidelines–Heart Failure, heart failure patients are started on aggressive risk reduction therapies such as cholesterol-lowering drugs, beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors, aspirin, diuretics and anticoagulants in the hospital.  They also receive alcohol/drug use and thyroid management counseling as well as referrals for cardiac rehabilitation before being discharged.

According to the AHA, about 5.7 million people suffer from heart failure.  Statistics also show that 670,000 new cases are diagnosed each year and more than 277,000 people will die of heart failure.

HealthGrades named Edward #1 in Illinois for Coronary Interventional Procedures and one of America’s 100

Best Hospitals for Cardiac Care, Cardiac Surgery and Coronary Intervention for 2012.  In addition, Edward is a regional leader in awareness and early detection with HeartAware, an online test to identify people at risk for heart disease: www.edward.org/heartaware.  For more information about Edward’s cardiac care, visit www.edward.org/heart.  For more information about Edward’s quality rankings, honors and recognition, visit www.edward.org/howweperform.