Spectrum Health Earns Cardiac Gold Performance Achievement Award

Only 121 Hospitals Cited By The American College of Cardiology

Spectrum Health has received the American College of Cardiology Foundation’s NCDR ACTION Registry-GWTG Gold Performance Achievement Award for 2009 – one of only 121 hospitals nationwide to do so. In addition, Spectrum Health was one of only five Michigan hospitals to receive the honor.

The award recognizes Spectrum Health’s commitment and success in implementing a higher standard of care for heart attack patients. It also signifies that Spectrum Health has reached an aggressive goal of treating coronary artery disease patients with 85 percent compliance to core standard levels of care outlined by the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association clinical guidelines and recommendations.

“We are committed to aggressively implementing better ways to prevent and treat heart attacks,” said Matt Van Vranken, executive vice president, Spectrum Health and president, Spectrum Health Hospital Group. “This recognition is especially gratifying after just being named a 100 Top Cardiovascular Hospital. Our physicians and staff do a tremendous job of caring for our heart patients.”

To receive the ACTION Registry-GWTG Gold Performance Achievement Award, Spectrum Health consistently followed the treatment guidelines in ACTION Registry-GWTG for 24 consecutive months. These include aggressive use of medications like cholesterol-lowering drugs, beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors, aspirin and anticoagulants in the hospital.

“The American College of Cardiology Foundation and the American Heart Association commend Spectrum Health for its success in implementing standards of care and protocols,” said Christopher Cannon, MD, ACTION Registry-GWTG Steering Committee Chairperson, Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Associate Physician in the Cardiovascular Division at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

“The full implementation of acute and secondary prevention guideline-recommended therapy is a critical step in saving the lives and improving outcomes of heart attack patients,” added Gregg C. Fonarow, MD, ACTION Registry-GWTG Steering Committee Vice-Chairperson and Director of Ahmanson-UCLA Cardiomyopathy Center.

Created by the merger of the American College of Cardiology Foundation’s NCDR ACTION Registry® and the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines-CAD program, ACTION Registry-GWTG combines the best of both programs into a single, unified national registry. The new registry joins the robust data collection and quality reporting features of the ACTION Registry with the collaborative models, unique tools, and quality improvement techniques of the GWTG-CAD program.

With the collective strengths of these two programs, ACTION Registry-GWTG empowers health care provider teams to consistently treat heart attack patients according to the most current, science-based guidelines; and establishes a national standard for understanding and improving the quality, safety, and outcomes of care provided for patients with coronary artery disease.

Spectrum Health is a not-for-profit health system in West Michigan that offers a full continuum of care through the Spectrum Health Hospital Group, a collection of seven hospitals and more than 140 service sites; the Spectrum Health Medical Group and mmpc, multispecialty physician groups with more than 400 providers; and Priority Health, a health plan with nearly 500,000 members. Spectrum Health’s 16,000 employees, 1,500 medical staff members and 2,000 volunteers are committed to delivering the highest quality care. The organization provided $111.1 million in community benefit during its 2008 fiscal year. As a system, Spectrum Health has earned more than 100 awards during the past 10 years.