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Community Corner

Tri-City Medical Center joins "Get With The Guidelines–AFIB Program" Posted by BEH , March

Tri-City Medical Center has joined the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines®–AFIB, a quality improvement program created to help hospital teams consistently provide the latest guideline-based treatment for patients with atrial fibrillation.

Atrial fibrillation, or AF, is a quivering or irregular heartbeat affecting more than 2.7 million Americans, and accounts for about one-third of hospitalizations for cardiac rhythm disturbance. People with AF are five times more likely to suffer a stroke and can develop blood clots, heart failure and other complications.

      The American Heart Association’s GWTG–AFIB was developed to help healthcare professionals utilize a quality improvement blueprint for how best to care for AF patients using the most up-to-date research-based guidelines.

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      As a GWTG–Stroke and Heart Failure participating hospitalTri-City Medical Center is encouraged to develop a comprehensive system for providing rapid diagnosis and treatment of AF patients that includes appropriate use of safe anticoagulants to prevent stroke and heart-rate controlling medications to prevent heart failure.

      Tri-City Medical Center is also increasing its efforts to identify those patients who have AF, using GWTG-AFIB protocols for treatment, monitoring tools, and patient education.      Through GWTG–AFIB, the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association provides Tri-City Medical Center training in the program’s patient management tool and the opportunity to track performance against the guidelines and national benchmarks.  

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 “Tri-City Medical Center is dedicated to helping our patients with atrial fibrillation have the best possible outcomes, and implementing the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines-AFIB program will help us accomplish this by making it easier for our teams to put proven knowledge and guidelines to work on a daily basis,” said — Lydia Serrin, RN, MSN, Clinical Care Coordinator for the CardioVascular Health Institute. 

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