CCMH Awarded for Efforts to Improve Rural Stroke Care
August 22, 2024
CARROLLTON, Mo. – The American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines® - Stroke Rural Recognition Silver award recognizes efforts to address the unique health needs of rural communities.
People who live in rural communities live an average of three years fewer than urban counterparts, have a 40 percent higher likelihood of developing heart disease and face a 30 percent increased risk for stroke mortality — a gap that has grown over the past two decades, Carroll County Memorial Hospital (CCMH) is committed to changing that.
For efforts to optimize stroke care and eliminate rural health care outcome disparities, CCMH received the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines® - Stroke Rural Recognition Silver award.
The American Heart Association, the world’s leading nonprofit organization focused on heart and brain health for all, recognizes the importance of health care services provided to people living in rural areas by rural hospitals that play a vital role in initiation of timely evidence-based care. For that reason, all rural hospitals participating in Get With The Guidelines - Stroke are eligible to receive award recognition based on a unique methodology focused on early acute stroke performance metrics.
“We are proud that our team at Carroll County Memorial Hospital is being recognized for the important work we do every day to improve the lives of people in Carrollton and surrounding areas who are affected by stroke, giving them the best possible chance of survival and recovery,” said Deborah Smith, CCMH Director of Emergency Services. “As a hospital in a rural community, we deal with characteristics, such as extended interfacility transportation times, and limited staffing resources. We’ve made it a goal to make sure those hurdles do not affect the standard of care our stoke patients receive.”
“Rural communities deserve high quality stroke care,” said Scott Thoreson, CCMH Chief Executive Officer. “Receiving this recognition is a wonderful reflection of our team’s dedication to evidence-based practices and we are proud of the excellent care they provide to every patient.”
The award recognizes hospitals for their efforts toward acute stroke care excellence demonstrated by composite score compliance to guideline-directed care for intravenous thrombolytic therapy, timely hospital inter-facility transfer, dysphagia screening, symptom timeline and deficit assessment documentation, emergency medical services communication, brain imaging and stroke expert consultation.
“Patients and health care professionals in Carrollton and surrounding areas face unique health care challenges and opportunities,” said Karen E. Joynt Maddox, M.D., MPH, volunteer expert for the American Heart Association, co-author on “Call to Action: Rural Health: A Presidential Advisory From the American Heart Association and American Stroke Association” and co-director of the Center for Health Economics and Policy at the Institute for Public Health at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. “Carroll County Memorial Hospital has furthered this important work to improve care for all Americans, regardless of where they live.”
For more information about the services at Carroll County Memorial Hospital, visit our website http://www.carrollcountyhospital.org or call 660-542-1695.
Carroll County Memorial Hospital (CCMH), the area’s premier healthcare resource, is a 25-bed Critical Access facility serving Carrollton and the surrounding communities. It offers 24-hour emergency care, specialized services such as advanced diagnostics, post-acute skilled care (swing bed) and comprehensive family care. CCMH is dedicated to the Health and Well Being of All We Serve. For more information, visit carrollcountyhospital.org.
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 14 million patients since 2001. For more information, visit heart.org.