PINEHURST – There are 18 Joint Commission-certified Stroke Centers in North Carolina. The most recently certified is at FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital.
The Moore Regional stroke care program earned the Joint Commission’s Gold Seal of Approval after an on-site review in February. The designation, which was developed in collaboration with the American Stroke Association, recognizes programs that have made exceptional efforts to ensure better outcomes for stroke patients.
Started in 2003, the program is based on the American Stroke Association’s guidelines for stroke care.
According to Bruce Solomon, D.O., and Suzanne Wilson, M.D., the Stroke Center designation acknowledges Moore Regional’s commitment to provide quality stroke care to the communities it serves. Dr. Solomon is a neurologist and Stroke Center medical director, and Dr. Wilson is a hospitalist and a member of Moore Regional’s Stroke Performance Improvement Committee.
“The Stroke Center designation has been the culmination of the hard work and commitment by our nursing staff, nursing administration and physicians who are involved with caring for people with stroke,” Dr. Solomon says. “This designation will assure our patients that the best possible care is being given to our patients from the Emergency Department, ICU and neurology floor, and rehabilitation. We are proud to be able to provide the service we would want for our own families.”
“This certification highlights Moore Regional’s responsibility to this community,” says Dr. Wilson. “The designation honors us and shows the community that Moore Regional is producing evidence-based medicine and continually striving for better ways to care for our patients.”
Stroke is the third leading cause of death and the leading cause of serious, long-term disability in the United States. About 700,000 people experience a new or recurrent stroke each year.
Located in the so-called “stroke belt” and serving thousands of Sandhills retirees and Baby Boomers, Moore Regional treated more than 470 stroke patients in 2008. The Emergency Department, the Medical/Neurology Intensive Care Unit, the Neurology Nursing unit and Inpatient Rehabilitation provide stroke care services with the support of almost every other department in the hospital. As first-responders, the paramedics and EMTs of Moore County EMS and FirstHealth Regional EMS are also active members of the stroke care team.
“If you look at our continuum of care, you see that we provide everything that most stroke patients need,” says Joy Martin, R.N., the hospital’s stroke coordinator and chair of the Stroke Performance Improvement team. “Our patients can be confident in what we do here. We have protocols in place, they are followed, and we do them well.”
An important component of the stroke care program involves Inpatient Rehabilitation, which has been continuously accredited by CARF (Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities) International since1996. According to Linda DeYoung, administrative director of FirstHealth Rehabilitative Services, the Stroke Center designation is a visible illustration of FirstHealth’s core purpose: “to care for people.”
“Our adult inpatient rehab hospital program sought and received the accrediting body’s new ‘optional’ stroke specialty program certification,” DeYoung says. “We wanted to ensure that, due to our high stroke population, we provided the best and latest methods in stroke care. This achievement represents the highest level of rehabilitation accreditation that can be awarded to an organization and demonstrates that our inpatient rehab and stroke specialty programs are of the highest quality and are measurable and accountable.”
Central to Moore Regional’s effort in achieving the Stroke Center designation has been the development of an Emergency Department process to quickly identify and respond to patients with signs of recent stroke. Only with an early diagnosis that is confirmed with a CT scan can the so-called “clot-busting” tPA medication be given to a stroke patient. The only drug with the potential to improve the effects of stroke, tPA must be administered within three hours of the onset of symptoms, and then only to patients who have suffered ischemic (clot-induced) stroke.
According to Martin, the national turnaround goal for a CT-confirmed stroke diagnosis is 45 minutes. At Moore Regional, the average turnaround time is 26 minutes.
Interested?
For more information on stroke care services at FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital, call 715-1478 or (800) 213-3284 toll-free.
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