Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center Receives Heart Failure Care Award from the American Heart Association

UCLA Health article
3 min read

Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center has received the Get With The Guidelines® Heart Failure Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award from the American Heart Association for its excellence in the treatment of patients with heart failure.  The award was received Nov. 14 during the American Heart Association's 2011 Scientific Sessions.

The recognition signifies that UCLA has reached impressive benchmarks in the evidence-based treatment of heart failure patients.  Get With The Guidelines is a quality improvement initiative that provides healthcare providers with tools that follow proven evidence-based guidelines and procedures in caring for heart failure patients.

Under Get With The Guidelines Heart Failure treatment guidelines, heart failure patients are started on aggressive mortality-reduction therapies such as beta blockers, ACE inhibitors, and aldosterone antagonists   in the hospital. They also receive education on heart failure management  and a transition of care plan before being discharged.

"The Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center team is dedicated to being among the top hospitals nationwide in the care of heart failure patients by implementing evidence-based strategies that can improve long-term patient outcomes, reduce costs and avoid future hospitalizations," said Dr. Gregg C. Fonarow, Eliot Corday Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine and Science and director of the Ahmanson-UCLA Cardiomyopathy Center who also serves on the GWTG National Steering Committee.

The program helps hospital 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 toward the goal of enhancing patient outcomes and saving lives.

"The goal of the American Heart Association's 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. Published scientific studies are providing us with more and more evidence that Get With The Guidelines works," 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.

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.

The UCLA Health 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. Comprised of Ronald Reagan UCLA Health - Santa Monica Medical Center-UCLA Medical Center and Orthopaedic Hospital, the Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital at UCLA, UCLA Mattel Children's Hospital and the UCLA Medical Group, with its wide-reaching system of primary care and specialty care offices throughout the region, the UCLA Health is among the most comprehensive and advanced health care systems in the world.

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.

-UCLA-

Media Contact:
Rachel Champeau
(310) 794-2270
[email protected]

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Rachel Champeau
(310) 794-2270
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