BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – OSF St. Joseph Medical Center has received the American Stroke Association’s Get With The GuidelinesSM–Stroke (GWTG–Stroke) Silver Performance Achievement Award. The award recognizes the medical center’s commitment and success in implementing a higher standard of stroke care by ensuring stroke patients receive treatment according to nationally accepted standards and recommendations.

"With a stroke, time lost is brain lost, and the GWTG–Stroke Silver Performance Achievement Award addresses the important element of time,” said Kelly Schuler, neuroscience leader.

OSF St. Joseph Medical Center has developed a comprehensive system for rapid diagnosis and treatment of stroke patients admitted to the emergency department. This includes being equipped to provide brain imaging scans, with neurologists available to conduct patient evaluations and using clot-busting medications when appropriate.

To receive the GWTG-Stroke Silver Performance Achievement Award, the medical center consistently complied with the requirements in the GWTG–Stroke program for at least one year. These requirements include aggressive use of medications like tPA, antithrombotics, anticoagulation therapy, DVT prophylaxis, cholesterol reducing drugs, and 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.

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.