St. Mary’s Medical Center Receives Award for Heart Failure Care

West Palm Beach, Fla. (July 5, 2016) – St. Mary’s Medical Center earns the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines^®- Heart Failure Gold Quality Achievement Award. The honor recognizes the hospital’s commitment to meeting nationally recognized, research-based measures for the diagnosis and treatment of heart failure patients at a set level for a designated period.

To earn the award, St. Mary’s met specific quality achievement measures including evaluation of the patient, proper use of medications and aggressive risk-reduction therapies, such as ACE inhibitors/ARBs, beta-blockers, diuretics, anticoagulants, and other appropriate therapies. Before patients are discharged from the hospital, they schedule a follow-up visit and receive education on managing their heart failure and overall health, as well as other care transition interventions.

“It’s a privilege to lead a hospital that has been continuously recognized for delivering high quality care for three generations,” said Gabrielle Finley-Hazle, CEO of St. Mary’s and the Palm Beach Children’s Hospital. “This honor from the American Heart Association is a tribute to our outstanding heart failure team who is dedicated to healing the community one patient at a time.”

Get With The Guidelines-Heart Failure is a quality improvement program that helps hospital teams follow the most up-to-date, research-based standards with the goal of speeding recovery and reducing hospital readmissions for heart failure patients. Launched in 2005, numerous published studies have demonstrated the program’s success in achieving patient outcome improvements, including reductions in 30-day readmissions and mortality rates.

“We are pleased to recognize St. Mary’s Medical Center for their commitment to heart failure care,” said Paul Heidenreich, M.D., M.S., national chairman of the Get With The Guidelines Steering Committee and Professor of Medicine at Stanford University. “Research has shown there are benefits to patients who are treated at hospitals that have adopted the Get With The Guidelines program.”

According to the American Heart Association, about 5.7 million adults in the United States suffer from heart failure, with the number expected to rise to 8 million by 2030. Statistics show that each year about 870,000 new cases are diagnosed and about 50 percent of those diagnosed will die within five years. However, many heart failure patients can lead a full, enjoyable life when their condition is managed with proper medications or devices and with healthy lifestyle changes. For more information about the cardiac services at St. Mary’s Medical Center, please visit www.stmarysmc.com/our-services/heart-vascular.