Dr. Bill Likosky
Stroke Program Director, Swedish Medical Center, Seattle, Wash.
"Swedish Medical Center Seattle was awarded one of health care's most prestigious honors, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organization's (JCAHO) 2005 Ernest Amory Codman Award for stroke care. The award was given in the category of disease specific management, which requires a program to demonstrate its outcomes of care and use data for quality improvement. Get With The Guidelines served as a foundation for the award-winning quality initiative. With Get With The Guidelines, our stroke team was able to benchmark performance, identify variances to guidelines and manage timely and effective acute stroke care and continually improve care."
Tammy Cress, R.N., M.S.N.
Stroke Program Clinical Supervisor, Swedish Medical Center, Seattle, Wash.
“Get With The Guidelines allows one to compare outcomes with a large number of programs nationally providing immediate feedback regarding comparable performance. This provided our program with an opportunity to benchmark and target performance improvement."
Christy Stephenson
President and CEO, Robert Wood Johnson University Hamilton, Hamilton, N.J.
"In 2004, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Hamilton (“RWJ Hamilton”) became the first and only hospital in the state of New Jersey and the fourth hospital nationwide to receive the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the nation’s highest award for quality and performance excellence. The hospital also received the Quality New Jersey Governor’s Award for Performance Excellence – Gold, the only hospital to receive this prestigious state award twice.
"Participating in voluntary initiatives such as Get With The Guidelines gives us a lead on cutting-edge quality initiatives that bring in the latest evidence-based guidelines for the care and overall treatment of our patients; and by partnering with our physicians in implementing these initiatives we improve our healthcare outcomes. Get With The Guidelines provided RWJ Hamilton with the tools necessary to measure, benchmark and improve performance against a number of criteria at both the state and national level. These tools are the perfect complement to the framework provided by the Baldrige criteria to develop systems and processes that enable us to optimize teamwork efficiencies and effectiveness, empower staff and improve deployment of initiatives allowing us to achieve high performance and quality outcomes, so we can continually fulfill our mission to “…promote, preserve and restore the health of our community.”
Steven M. Arthur, R.N.
Cardiac Rehabilitation Educator, Carondelet St. Mary’s Hospital
“Get With The Guidelines is empowerment."
"First and foremost, it is empowerment for our patients. We have taken this program and used it to educate our patients about their disease process, what the healthcare team has done to help them, and finally, what they can do to join in their treatment to make it succeed.’ I have had so many patients tell me after they complete our GWTG-CAD educational program, ‘Why didn’t someone tell me this 10 years ago after my first heart attack… now I know what to do!’ They are leaving the hospital with lots more knowledge and much less of the fear they entered with.
"It has been empowerment for me and for the healthcare team I work with. Much like the patient, I had a feeling of being swept along by the system. I have specialized in cardiac nursing for years and was frustrated by my inability to help a patient be less a recipient of medical care and more of a participant. GWTG has changed all of that. It has enabled the healthcare team and I at Carondelet, St. Mary’s to step off the curb on the same foot and move in unison with our patients through a complex disease process and emerge with enlightened, healthier, and happier people than we ever have before. I speak not only of the patient but also of everyone they touch, from the bedside nurse, to the dietician, the physical therapist, to their family and friends. We all say goodbye on the day of discharge with a feeling of a job well done.
"I want to thank the American Heart Association for providing this thoughtful, holistic program as well as Carondelet St. Mary’s Hospital for having the foresight to allow us to participate."
Tommy Thompson, former Secretary of Health and Human Services
“Get With The Guidelines is a model for the nation in addressing a dire healthcare issue. The program helps patients, working with caregivers, learn how to take action to save their own lives.”
William R. Lewis, M.D.
Assistant Professor of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University
Director, Clinical Electrophysiology Section, MetroHealth Medical Center, Division of Cardiology
"We recently presented our data to our Department of Medicine. They wondered why we were not publicizing this more. The fact that we received a PAA was a source of pride in our own hospital. I was approached by people in infection control and elsewhere to see if I had ideas that could help them with their QI projects. As far as career issues are concerned, I think that GWTG has changed my career. I see an area of medicine that has been neglected until now and GWTG is an opportunity to change the way we practice medicine and to offer another area of research."
A. Gray Ellrodt, M.D.
Chief of Medicine, Berkshire Medical Center
"Berkshire Medical Center was successful in obtaining higher reimbursement in the Premier Pay for Performance Project due in large part to our participation in GWTG. GWTG helped move us to a performance level we could not have attained without the collaborative model, tools and techniques provided by the American Heart Association and this program. GWTG not only helped us significantly improve care for our patients but improved our bottom line."
Rose Marie Robertson, M.D.
Chief Science Officer and Past President, American Heart Association
Professor of Medicine, Vanderbilt University Medical Center
"Get With The Guidelines represents a successful partnership between the American Heart Association, peer review organizations, medical societies, departments of health, hospital associations, managed care organizations and others interested in improved delivery of quality cardiovascular care to patients with heart disease. This is an unprecedented effort to work together toward the common goal of reducing subsequent death, further cardiac events and strokes. I know that this kind of point-of-service, guidelines-based system makes a difference — I've seen the evidence at my own institution. I urge you to join me in becoming a champion for quality care by bringing the Get With The Guidelines program to your hospital."
James Joseph Rybacki, Pharm.D.
Author, The Essential Guide to Prescription Drugs, and Medicines and Your Family: National Treatment Guidelines
"Coronary artery disease, stroke and heart failure impact millions of families — tearing at the fabric and future of those we know, love and care for. While we have clear guidelines that tell us that the right combination of medicines and lifestyle changes dramatically lowers the risk of repeat problems and hospitalizations — we often fail to get patients the medicines, rehabilitation and information that they need. Hospitals offer a crucial opportunity to check previous treatment results, reinforce the latest science and ensure continued excellence in care when patients make the transition back home. Evolving from a focus on coronary artery disease, the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines program has expanded to bring patients and their families the benefits of proven treatments for strokes and heart failure as well. Uniquely structured, provider-to-provider communication in GWTG spans the continuum of care. I believe that GWTG will lower the risk of repeat heart attacks and strokes and decrease the number of repeat hospitalizations for heart failure. GWTG offers patients and practitioners the best chance to turn a long road to recovery into a highway to the best possible health."
