SEATTLE, Nov. 4 /PRNewswire/ -- The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) has notified Swedish Medical Center that its First Hill and Providence campuses have been certified as Primary Stroke Centers. To date, only 39 of the 5,764 hospitals in the United States have earned this designation. Swedish is the first medical center in western Washington to receive certification and only the second in the state. (Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane is the other.)
Stroke is a type of vascular disease that affects the arteries leading to and within the brain. According to the American Stroke Association, stroke is the No. 3 killer of Americans and the No. 1 cause of disability. Nearly 700,000 people suffer a new or recurrent stroke each year and almost 165,000 die of the condition.
“Stroke treatments are complex, rapidly evolving and far from perfect,” said William Likosky, M.D., director of the Stroke Program in the Seattle Neuroscience Institute at Swedish Medical Center. “Patients suffering stroke need to get to a hospital very quickly and then around 80 different things need to be done to them. That takes an enormous amount of effort and coordination.”
Achieving Primary Stroke Center certification involved training and coordinating care with many Swedish personnel, including emergency physicians, surgeons, neurologists, nurses, therapists, laboratory and pharmacy staff, radiologists, and even patient transporters.
Swedish demonstrated to JCAHO examiners that the medical center had a trained Stroke Team available around the clock to evaluate a stroke patient within 15 minutes of arrival. Also, Swedish can perform and interpret either a head CT scan or a brain MRI scan within 45 minutes, has a fully functioning medical laboratory open 24/7, and is able to provide stroke care well beyond the emergency department.
Over the past several months, Swedish has worked with Harborview Medical Center and other local emergency medical system providers to better coordinate stroke response and treatment. “Ultimately, we would like every major hospital in the Puget Sound area to be a certified stroke center,” Dr. Likosky said.
“That’s critical because we live in a recognized ‘stroke belt’ where there are more fatal strokes than in many other parts of the country.”
For more information on stroke, contact the American Stroke Association at http://www.strokeassociation.org/, visit http://www.swedish.org/ or call the Swedish Stroke Program office at 206-215-3958.
Swedish Medical Center is the largest, most comprehensive, nonprofit health provider in the Pacific Northwest. It is comprised of three hospital campuses (First Hill, Providence and Ballard), Swedish Home Care Services and Swedish Physicians -- a network of 11 primary-care clinics. In addition to general medical and surgical care, Swedish is known as a regional referral center, providing specialized treatment in areas such as cardiac care, oncology, orthopedics, high-risk obstetrics, neurological care, sleep medicine, pediatrics, organ transplantation and clinical research. For more information, visit http://www.swedish.org/
Swedish Medical Center
CONTACT: Ed Boyle of Swedish Medical Center, +1-206-386-2748, ored.boyle@swedish.org
Web site: http://www.swedish.org/