Salem and Lynn, Mass. – North Shore Medical Center (NSMC) has received the American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines – Stroke (GWTG–Stroke) Silver and Bronze Performance Achievement Awards. The awards recognize NSMC’s commitment and success in implementing a higher standard of stroke care by ensuring that stroke patients receive treatment according to nationally accepted standards and recommendations.

“With a stroke, time lost is brain lost, and this award NSMC’s fast response to patients in need,” said Sanford Levy, MD, NSMC’s Chief of Neurology.

NSMC has developed a comprehensive system for rapid diagnosis and treatment of stroke patients admitted to our Emergency Department. This includes always being equipped to provide brain imaging scans, having neurologists available to conduct patient evaluations and using clot-busting medications when appropriate.

NSMC Union Hospital in Lynn received the GWTG-Stroke Silver Performance Achievement Award for consistently complying for at least one year with the requirements in the GWTG–Stroke program. These include aggressive use of effective medications like:

  -- tPA - Also known as tissue plasminogen activator, this clot-busting drug is the only drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the acute (urgent) treatment of ischemic stroke.
  -- antithrombotics
  -- anticoagulation therapy
  -- cholesterol reducing drugs
  -- smoking cessation.

This twelve-month evaluation period is the second in an ongoing self-evaluation by the hospital to continually reach the 85 percent compliance level needed to sustain this award.

To receive the GWTG-Stroke Bronze Performance Achievement Award, NSMC Salem Hospital consistently complied for at least three months with the requirements in the GWTG–Stroke program.

“The American Stroke Association commends NSMC for its success in implementing standards of care and protocols,” said Lee H. Schwamm, M.D., national Get With the Guidelines Steering Committee Member and director of acute stroke services at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. “The full implementation of acute care and secondary prevention recommendations and guidelines is a critical step in saving the lives and improving outcomes of stroke patients.”

According to the American Stroke Association, each year approximately 700,000 people suffer a stroke – 500,000 are first attacks and 200,000 are recurrent. Of stroke survivors, 21 percent of men and 24 percent of women die within a year, and for those aged 65 and older, the percentage is even higher.