ARMC Nationally Recognized with Four Awards for Its Commitment to Providing High-Quality Patient Care

ARMC has earned four awards from the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines® program in recognition of its achievement in treating type 2 diabetes, stroke, and pediatric cardiac arrest patients in its hospital.

Colton, CA - Arrowhead Regional Medical Center (ARMC) has received four awards from the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines® program in recognition of its efforts to improve in-hospital patient care and improve survival rates. ARMC was honored with the Get With The Guidelines® – Resuscitation Silver quality achievement award, the Get With The Guidelines® – Stroke Plus Gold Award, the Target: Stroke Elite Honor Roll, and the Target: Type 2 Diabetes Honor Roll.

The AHA has estimated that over 300,000 adults and children experience an in-hospital cardiac arrest each year, and someone in the United States has a stroke or heart attack every 40 seconds. Heart disease and stroke are the United States’ number one and number five causes of death, and survival is largely dependent on timely emergency medical response and effective treatment.

The AHA developed the nationwide Get With The Guidelines® ­– Resuscitation program to help save the lives of patients who experience in-hospital cardiac arrests by implementing the most up-to-date research-based guidelines for treatment. The program and its guidelines take a data-driven approach to working to double in-hospital survival rates from cardiac arrest. Guidelines include following protocols for patient safety, medical emergency team response, effective and timely resuscitation, and post-resuscitation care. Participating hospitals can analyze data by day, date, time, unit, and more in order to work toward continuous process improvement. ARMC received its Resucitation Silver quality achievement award for reaching an aggressive goal of treating patients to core standards of care as outlined by the AHA for one calendar year.

“Our top priority is helping our patient population in San Bernardino County thrive, and Get With The Guidelines® has been a fantastic resource for treating our patients,” said William Gilbert, ARMC Hospital Director. “Our teams have been able to easily and efficiently implement proven knowledge and guidelines to practice in their day-to-day treatment processes, to ultimately help more patients survive.”

The Get With The Guidelines® – Stroke program aims to improve stroke care by promoting consistent adherence to the latest scientific treatment guidelines for stroke patients. Achievement measures include timely IV thrombolysis, early antithrombotics, VTE prophylaxis, and smoking cessation. ARMC earned Gold Plus recognition for reaching an aggressive goal of treating patients to core standard levels of care as outlined by the AHA for at least two consecutive calender years and for complying to an additional level of quality during that period.

The Target: Stroke Recognition program was created in 2010 by the AHA and American Stroke Association to improve acute ischemic stroke care by reducing door-to-needle times for patients being treated with tPA. The program set a goal for 50 percent or more of eligible patients to be treated with tPA within 60 minutes of hospital arrival and identified ten key strategies to help meet this goal including EMS pre-notification of hospitals, rapid acquisition and interpretation of brain imaging, premixing tPA, utilizing a stroke-team-based approach, and receiving rapid performance data feedback. ARMC has reached a benchmark of 85% of applicable patients experiencing door-to-needle times of 60 minutes or less, earning a place on the Target: Stroke Elite Honor Roll.

The Target: Type 2 Diabetes™ Honor Roll is a recognition opportunity for the AHA’s Know Diabetes by Heart™ initiative, which aims to comprehensively combat the national public health impact of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. ARMC was named to the Target: Type 2 Diabetes Honor Roll (Stroke) in recognition of its achievements in the associated Get With The Guidelines®-Stroke program and overall diabetes cardiovascular treatment efforts.

About Arrowhead Regional Medical Center

Arrowhead Regional Medical Center is a 456-bed university-affiliated teaching hospital licensed by the State of California Department of Public Health, operated by San Bernardino County, and governed by the Board of Supervisors. It is ARMC’s mission, in an environment of learning and innovation, to serve our diverse community with high-quality, compassionate care. The hospital, located on a 70-acre campus in Colton, California, operates the Edward G. Hirschman Burn Center, a level I trauma center, a comprehensive stroke center, a behavioral health center, and five primary care centers. ARMC also provides more than 40 outpatient specialty care services. ARMC is helping to achieve the countywide vision by addressing the community’s wellness and educational needs. ARMC is the primary teaching hospital for the California University of Science and Medicine (CUSM). The University welcomed its first class of students in 2018. For more information on CUSM, visit https://cusm.edu/. For more information about ARMC, visit https://www.arrowheadregional.org.

About Get With The Guidelines®

Get With The Guidelines^® is the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s hospital-based quality improvement program that provides hospitals with the latest research-based guidelines. Developed with the goal of saving lives and hastening recovery, Get With The Guidelines® has touched the lives of more than 12 million patients since 2001. For more information, visit heart.org.