![\"Get](\"http:\/\/blogs.cooperhealth.org\/news\/files\/2011\/04\/inside_201104_guidelines.jpg\" "\\"Get")
Cooper University Hospital has received the Get With The Guidelines\u00ae Heart Failure Gold Plus Performance Achievement Award from the American Heart Association for its excellence in the treatment of patients with heart failure.<\/p>\nCooper University Hospital has received the Get With The Guidelines\u00ae Heart Failure Gold Plus Performance Achievement Award from the American Heart Association for its excellence in the treatment of patients with heart failure.<\/p>\n
This award is given only to hospitals that achieve 85 percent or higher adherence to all Get With The Guidelines Heart Failure Performance Achievement indicators to improve quality of patient care and outcomes. Cooper is the only hospital in the region to receive the Gold Plus achievement.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cCooper treats some of the most seriously ill patients in the region, many of them heart failure patients,\u201d said Fredric L. Ginsberg, M.D., clinical cardiologist and Director of the Cooper Heart Failure Program. \u201cIn addition to offering state-of-the-art care for seriously-ill patients with severe heart failure, our program provides chronic disease management. The success of our program is related to the consistent use of medications and device therapies proven to be beneficial for this illness, as well as using a team approach that improves access to heart failure care for our patients.\u201d<\/p>\n
Under Get With The Guidelines\u2013Heart 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. Cooper has successfully implemented these quality measures for 12 months.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Cooper team is to be commended for this commitment to improving the quality of care for their patients,\u201d 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. \u201cThe goal of the American Heart Association\u2019s Get With The Guidelines program is to help healthcare providers implement appropriate evidence-based care and protocols that will reduce disability and death and improve the quality of life for patients.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the American Heart Association, about 5.7 million people suffer from heart failure. Statistics also show that, each year, 670,000 new cases are diagnosed and more than 292,200 people will die of heart failure.<\/p>\n
\u201cCooper is dedicated to being among the top hospitals nationwide in the care of heart failure patients. Implementing the American Heart Association\u2019s Get With The Guidelines\u2013Heart Failure program is helping us accomplish this goal by making it easier for our professionals to improve the long-term outcome for our patients,\u201d said Perry J. Weinstock, MD, Head of the Division of Cardiovascular Disease and Director of Clinical Cardiology at Cooper University Hospital.<\/p>\n
Get With The Guidelines\u2013Heart Failure helps Cooper\u2019s staff develop and implement acute and secondary prevention guideline processes. The program provides hospitals with a web-based patient management tool, decision support, robust registry, real-time benchmarking capabilities and other performance improvement methodologies with the goal of enhancing patient outcomes and saving lives.<\/p>\n
This high-tech, evidence-based approach enables Cooper to improve the quality of care it provides heart failure patients, saves lives and ultimately, reduces healthcare costs by avoiding re-hospitalization.<\/p>\n