Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center has received the Get With The Guidelines®-Heart Failure Gold Quality Achievement Award from the American Heart Association. The recognition signifies that the hospital has reached an exceptional goal of treating heart failure patients according to guidelines of care recommended by the American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology.
"We are dedicated to making our care for heart failure patients among the best in the country. This recognition demonstrates that we are on the right track and we're very proud of our team," said Dr. Gregg Fonarow, UCLA's Eliot Corday Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine and Sciences, co-chief of clinical cardiology and director of the Ahmanson-UCLA Cardiomyopathy Center.
UCLA's team developed and implemented prevention guideline processes to improve patient care and outcomes with the Get With The Guidelines-Heart Failure program. The initiative provides hospitals with a web-based patient management tool, best practice discharge protocols and standing orders, along with a robust patient registry and real-time benchmarking capabilities to track performance.
Following Get With The Guidelines-Heart Failure treatment guidelines, heart failure patients are started on aggressive risk-reduction therapies if needed, including cholesterol-lowering drugs, beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors, aspirin, diuretics and anticoagulants while in the hospital. Before discharge, they also receive education on managing their heart failure and overall health, including lifestyle modifications and follow-up care. Hospitals must adhere to these measures at a set level for a designated period of time to be eligible for the achievement awards.
"Recent studies show that patients treated in hospitals participating in the American Heart Association's Get With The Guidelines-Heart Failure program receive a higher quality of care and may experience better outcomes," said Dr. Lee H. Schwamm, 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.
About UCLA Health
The UCLA Health System has for more than half a century provided the best in health care and the latest in medical technology to the people of Los Angeles and the world. Comprising Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center; UCLA Health - Santa Monica Medical Center; the Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital at UCLA; UCLA Mattel Children's Hospital; and the UCLA Medical Group, UCLA Health, with its wide-reaching system of primary care and specialty care offices throughout the region, is among the most comprehensive and advanced health care systems in the world.
About Get With The Guidelines
Get With The Guidelines® is the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association's hospital-based quality improvement program that empowers healthcare teams to save lives and reduce healthcare costs by helping hospitals follow evidence-based guidelines and recommendations.