A new online tool from the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association (AHA/ASA) aims to put top-performing hospitals on the map.
The tool pins hospitals recognized by the AHA/ASA’s quality-achievement awards on an interactive map at www.heart.org/myhealthcare. The map, launched July 16, allows users to search for decorated hospitals in a city or zip code.
It also lets users search for awarded hospitals within a specific distance of a city, like 100 miles. Additionally, users have the option of zooming and panning to navigate between different geographic areas. The map shows recognized hospitals in the United States and Puerto Rico.
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“It’s really to bring a heightened awareness to patients about which hospitals are participating in quality-improvement initiatives,” says Zainab Magdon-Ismail, vice president of quality improvement in the Founders Affiliate of the American Heart Association, which covers New York State. “It’s fascinating to look at, even from a personal standpoint.”
Magdon-Ismail stresses that the AHA/ASA doesn’t want patients to use the interactive map in an emergency. The map exists so patients and members of the medical community can easily recognize hospitals that have been recognized, she says.
Quality-achievement awards highlighted on the map focus on heart failure, heart attack, stroke, and cardiopulmonary resuscitation. They recognize hospitals that follow treatment guidelines designed to increase survival rates and reduce readmission rates.
They include “Primary Stroke Center Certification” for hospitals meeting standards for prompt patient care and “Advanced Certification in Heart Failure” for hospitals that meet standards on the treatment of heart-failure patients. The awards also include “Mission: Lifeline Heart Attack Receiving Center Accreditation” for hospitals fulfilling standards on heart-attack treatments such as angioplasties and “Mission: Lifeline Heart Attack Referring Center Accreditation” for hospitals that quickly diagnose heart attacks, stabilize patients, and transfer them to a receiving center.
And the map shows hospitals that qualify for awards under the AHA/ASA’s “Get With The Guidelines” program. That program recognizes hospitals that follow scientific guidelines when treating heart failure, strokes, and cardiac arrest.
The Get With The Guidelines program features different levels of awards based on length of achievement. For example, a gold-award-winning hospital has demonstrated achievement for two or more years, while a silver-award-winning hospital has shown achievement for one year.
In Syracuse, the map currently shows Crouse Hospital as having a gold-plus Get With The Guidelines award for stroke care and a silver Get With The Guidelines award for heart-failure care. It displays Upstate University Hospital with a gold-plus Get With The Guidelines award for stroke care and another gold-plus award for heart-failure care.
Binghamton’s Lourdes Hospital is listed with a gold-plus Get With The Guidelines award for stroke care. Rome Memorial Hospital has a gold-plus Get With The Guidelines award for heart-failure care, and Utica’s Faxton St. Luke’s Healthcare is shown with a gold-plus Get With The Guidelines award for stroke care.
Geneva General Hospital is pinned with a gold-plus Get With The Guidelines award for stroke care. It also has a Primary Stroke Center Certification. Elmira’s Arnot Ogden Medical Center is listed with a gold-plus Get With The Guidelines award for stroke care, as is Corning Hospital.
The map is not a comprehensive listing of all hospitals in an area. For example, it only shows Get With The Guidelines participants that received a higher-level award, according to Roseanne Hemmitt, the director of quality improvement in Western and Central New York for the AHA/ASA.
“We do only list silver- and gold-guideline hospitals on there,” she says. “Those have the most distinction.”
The AHA/ASA spent about six months mapping data to develop the online tool, Magdon-Ismail says. It plans to update the map every month to keep up with changes in hospitals’ awards, she adds.
Contact Seltzer at rseltzer@tgbbj.com
