Gill Heart Institute Receives AHA Achievement Award

LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 17, 2013) - UK HealthCare's Gill Heart Institute is the first in Kentucky to receive the Get With The Guidelines–Resuscitation Silver Quality Achievement Award from the American Heart Association. The recognition signifies that it has reached an aggressive goal in using guidelines-based care to improve patient outcomes from in-hospital cardiac arrest.

"Making sure our patients receive the quickest and most efficient care possible is an important part of our mission at the Gill heart Institute," said Dr. Susan S. Smyth, director of the Gill Heart Institute. "This award signifies our commitment to quality improvement in cardiovascular care."

Smyth added that the award was made possible by substantial effort of the part of the Resuscitation Committee led by Dr. Charles Campbell, director of inpatient Cardiovascular Services for the Gill Heart Institute, and Emergency Services Manager Patti Howard. Credit also goes to Kathy Semones, Pam Lane, and the Rapid Response team, and the commitment of our cardiology fellows to be present at every in-hospital cardiac arrest.

The Get With The Guidelines-Resuscitation program aims to help hospital teams save more lives threatened by cardiopulmonary emergencies by consistently following the most up-to-date scientific guidelines for treating patients who suffer a cardiac arrest in the hospital.

More than 18,800 in-hospital cardiac arrests occur each year, according to the American Heart Association.

Get With The Guidelines–Resuscitation helps staff develop and implement protocols that can reduce disability and death from cardiac and respiratory emergencies. It provides an evidence-based, quality improvement program of patient safety, medical emergency team response, effective resuscitation and post-emergency care.

Get With The Guidelines-Resuscitation builds on the work of the American Heart Association’s National Registry of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (NRCPR), originally launched in 1999 as a database of in-hospital resuscitation events from more than 500 hospitals. The data from the registry and now the quality program gives participating hospitals feedback on their resuscitation practice and patient outcomes and has been used to develop new evidence-based guidelines for in-hospital resuscitation.

The Gill Heart Institute joins other hospitals across the country in putting that data to work in everyday practice to save lives, ensuring cardiac arrest patients are getting timely CPR, defibrillation or other appropriate treatment within minutes of being found in cardiac arrest.

“The Gill Heart Institute's commitment to Get With the Guidelines-Resuscitation puts our quality improvement interventions and strategies into the workflow of care for their patients who experience cardiac arrest,” said Dr. Lee H. Schwamm, chair of the Get With The Guidelines National Steering Committee and professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School in Boston. “Shortening the time to effective resuscitation and maximizing post-resuscitation care is critical to patient survival.”      

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. For more information, visit heart.org/quality.

Pam Lane,  Dr. Charles L. Campbell, Director of Inpatient Services, Gill Heart Institute, Kathy Semonea and paramedic, Raymond Patrick.