Mount Nittany Medical Center has earned honors from the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association recognizing the hospital’s success ensuring that stroke patients receive the most appropriate treatment according to research-based guidelines based on the latest scientific evidence.
The medical center earned the Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Gold Plus Achievement Award and Target: Stroke Honor Roll Elite Plus.
To receive the honor, hospitals submit data for stroke care to a national database and 20 different metrics are measured. Those metrics are centered on scientific care and treatment that is consistently being administered to be aligned with current best practice. An organization must perform at 85 percent or greater for each metric for two years to receive the Get with the Guidelines gold recognition.
To qualify for the Target: Stroke Honor Roll Elite Plus, hospitals must meet quality measures developed to reduce the time between a patient’s arrival at the hospital and treatment with the clot-buster tissue plasminogen activator, or tPA, the only drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat ischemic stroke. If given intravenously in the first three hours after the start of stroke symptoms, tPA has been shown to significantly reduce the effects of stroke and lessen the chance of permanent disability.
Mount Nittany was first recognized as a Primary Stroke Center in 2014 and received Get with the Guidelines Silver Plus recognition in 2015, It received its first Gold Plus honor in 2016.
‘These awards show that we are right there with the best hospitals in the nation, and achieving these highest-level awards would not have been possible without the dedication of caregivers throughout the medical community,’ said Susan Maynard, stroke coordinator at Mount Nittany Medical Center. ‘It shows a commitment to excellence from everyone involved and is proof that you can receive excellent care, right here at home.’
