Sharon Regional Medical Center Receives Quality Achievement Award

Updated on August 5, 2018

American Heart Association Award recognizes Sharon Regional’s commitment to quality stroke care

Sharon Regional Medical Center, a Steward Family Hospital, has received the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines®-Stroke Silver Plus Quality Achievement Award. The award recognizes the hospital’s commitment to ensuring stroke patients receive the most appropriate treatment according to nationally recognized, research-based guidelines based on the latest scientific evidence.

Sharon Regional earned the award by meeting specific quality achievement measures for the diagnosis and treatment of stroke patients at a set level for a designated period. These measures include evaluation of the proper use of medications and other stroke treatments aligned with the most up-to-date, evidence-based guidelines with the goal of speeding recovery and reducing death and disability for stroke patients. Before discharge, patients should also receive education on managing their health, get a follow-up visit scheduled, as well as other care transition interventions.

“The fact that Sharon Regional is the county’s only hospital to receive this award and the only designated accredited primary stroke center, shows our complete dedication to improve the quality of care for our stroke patients,” stated Joseph Hugar, Sharon Regional’s president. “Through the implementation of the American Heart Association’s Get WithThe Guidelines-Stroke initiative that provides the tools and resources to help us track and measure our success in meeting the clinical guidelines, we are extremely proud of our team of highly skilled physicians and clinical staff who are committed to providing quality patient care focused on improving the outcomes of stroke patients that come to us for care.”




Sharon Regional additionally received the association’s Target: StrokeSM award. To qualify for this recognition, hospitals must meet quality measures developed to reduce the time between the patient’s arrival at the hospital and treatment with the clot-buster tissue plasminogen activator, or tPA, the only drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat ischemic stroke.

“We are pleased to recognize Sharon Regional Medical Center for their commitment to stroke care,” said Eric E. Smith, M.D., national chairman of the Get With The Guidelines Steering Committee and an associate professor of neurology at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. “Research has shown that hospitals adhering to clinical measures through the Get With The Guidelines quality improvement initiative can often see fewer readmissions and lower mortality rates.”

According to the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, stroke is the No. 5 cause of death and a leading cause of adult disability in the United States. On average, someone in the U.S. suffers a stroke every 40 seconds and nearly 795,000 people suffer a new or recurrent stroke each year.

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