Stroke Care Recognized
BERLIN – Atlantic General Hospital has received the Get With The Guidelines®–Stroke Silver Plus Quality Achievement Award from the American Heart Association. The award recognizes Atlantic General’s commitment and success in implementing a higher standard of care by ensuring that stroke patients receive treatment according to nationally accepted guidelines.
This marks the third year that Atlantic General has been recognized with a quality achievement award from the American Heart Association for stroke care.
Get With The Guidelines–Stroke helps Atlantic General’s staff continue to develop and implement acute and secondary prevention guideline processes to improve patient care and outcomes. The program provides hospitals with a web-based patient management tool, best practice discharge protocols and standing orders, along with a robust registry and real-time benchmarking capabilities to track performance.
The quick and efficient use of guideline procedures can improve the quality of care for stroke patients and may reduce disability and save lives.
“Recent studies show that patients treated in hospitals participating in the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines-Stroke program receive a higher quality of care and may experience better outcomes,” said Lee H. Schwamm, M.D., chair of the Get With The Guidelines National Steering Committee and director of the TeleStroke and Acute Stroke Services at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Mass. “Atlantic General Hospital’s stroke team is to be commended for their commitment to improving the care of their patients.”
Atlantic General Hospital achieved the Silver Plus Award for maintaining their Silver Award performance level for at least 12 months with an additional 75 percent compliance with specific quality measures for those twelve months. Atlantic General. Hospital, in fact, demonstrated greater than 75 percent compliance with six performance measures, including providing stroke education 96% of the time and 100% compliance with administering tPA, a clot-busting drug, to patients within 4.5 hours of symptom onset.
“Atlantic General is dedicated to making our care for stroke patients among the best in the country. The American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines–Stroke program helps us to accomplish this goal,” said Colleen Wareing, vice president of patient care services. “This recognition demonstrates that we are on the right track and we’re very proud of our team.”
Regional Honor Announced
SALISBURY — Peninsula Regional Medical Center (PRMC) is among the nation’s best hospitals for 2013-2014, and has been named a Best Regional Hospital on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, according to U.S. News & World Report, the publisher of Best Hospitals.
“A hospital that emerges from our analysis as one of the best has much to be proud of,” said Avery Comarow, U.S. News Health Rankings Editor. “Only about 15 percent of hospitals are recognized for their high performance as among their region’s best. Just 3 percent of all hospitals earn a national ranking in any specialty.”
U.S. News and World Report previously named PRMC a Most Connected Hospital for its use of technology in support of patient care and patient safety. In its recent Best Nursing Home Study, it gave Peninsula Regional’s Transitional Care Unit at a 5-Star Rating.
Realtor Scores Award
FENWICK — Sandy Greene, Associate Broker of ResortQuest® Real Estate, was awarded the coveted Sussex County Association of Realtors (SCAOR) Realtor-of-the-Year (ROTY) Award at the Annual ROTY Luncheon.
This award is given to the SCAOR member who exemplifies the REALTOR® image and exhibits good citizenship and spirit both professionally and personally through organizations benefiting the community, county, state and nation.
“ResortQuest Real Estate is truly honored to have one of its own achieve this honor,” said Brigit Taylor, managing broker and Broker-of-Record for the firm. “With her dedication to the realtor community, she is the right choice for this award.”
Licensed for over 28 years, Greene is currently the Sales Manager for ResortQuest Real Estate, LLC and has won numerous awards as Top Producer. She has also obtained the Certified Residential Specialist (CRS) and e-pro designations.
“Real Estate is a people business and meeting people and creating relationships is what I love to do best,” said Greene. “Earning the trust of fellow realtors along with my customers and clients is truly humbling and I’m honored to have been awarded Sussex County Realtor of the Year.”
Monthly Recipient Named
SALISBURY — Nurses at Peninsula Regional Medical Center are being honored with the DAISY Award for Extraordinary Nurses, a national program to recognize the outstanding efforts of nurses in their daily work.
The award recipient for June is Carol Crowder, RN, an operating room nurse. The nomination, written by the family friend of a patient, described how she demonstrated great compassion at a hard time as the friend accompanied the patient into the operating room. “While I am very proud of the entire OR staff, Carol touched my heart in an indescribable way that day,” the nominator wrote. “I was crying, and my mask was slipping down. She gently reached over and tightened it for me so I didn’t have to let go of his hand, as he was sobbing in fear. After he was asleep, tears rolled down my face, and Carol looked at me, and with a very comforting voice, she let me know she was there.”
Extraordinary compassion and clinical skill, like that demonstrated by Crowder, are what the DAISY Award is intended to honor.
“We are proud to be among the hospitals participating in the DAISY Award program. Nurses are heroes every day,” said PRMC Chief Nursing Officer Mary Beth D’Amico. “It’s important that our nurses know their work is highly valued.”
Hospital Joins Network
BERLIN – In a move designed to better serve patients across the Delaware border, Atlantic General Hospital (AGH) made history this week when it joined the Delaware Health Information Network (DHIN), becoming the first acute care hospital in the nation to join a Health Information Exchange (HIE) in another state.
According to AGH Chief Financial Officer Cheryl Nottingham, the step comes in response to the rising percentage of patients the hospital and its medical group serves from across the state border in Delaware.
“We’re very pleased to be connected with the Delaware Health Information Network. About 20 percent of the patients we treat in our emergency department are from Delaware, and having access to health information from Delaware hospitals affords another level of care that we can now provide to our patients,” she said.
Some of the patients treated by AGH come from emergency room visits made by people on vacation, while others are Delaware residents who choose to see doctors who practice at the AGH Health System.
“In just the six years since the launch of DHIN, the lines that define physical borders have blurred greatly when it comes to health care,” said Dr. Jan Lee, CEO of DHIN. “In some instances, patients become comfortable with a doctor, practice or hospital and develop a loyalty. Sometimes they are referred to a practitioner or specialist across a state line. Sometimes the patient or the doctor moves across the line. However it happens, the inclusion of those records in the patient’s file – regardless of zip code – can raise the speed and efficiency in which a patient is treated, and can even save lives.”
Through DHIN, AGH physicians involved in the care of Delaware residents will be able to see all of the previously generated medical results for that patient on the DHIN network, including pathology, laboratory, and radiology results dating back as far as 2007.