South Georgia Medical Center received the Get With The Guidelines-Resuscitation Gold Award for implementing specific quality improvement measures outlined by the American Heart Association for the treatment of patients who suffer cardiac arrests while in the hospital.
 
More than 200,000 adults and children have an in-hospital cardiac arrest each year, according to AHA.  The Get With The Guidelines-Resuscitation program was developed with the goal to save lives of those who experience in-hospital cardiac arrests through consistently following the most up-to-date research-based guidelines for treatment. Guidelines include following protocols for patient safety, medical emergency team response, effective and timely resuscitation and post-resuscitation care.
 
SGMC received the award for meeting specific measures in treating adult in-hospital cardiac arrest patients. To qualify for the awards, hospitals must comply with the quality measures for two or more consecutive years.
 
“SGMC is dedicated to helping our patients have the best possible outcome and implementing the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines-Resuscitation 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 Johnny Ball, III, Assistant Administrator for Communications & Public Affairs.
 
“We are pleased to recognize SGMC for their commitment following these guidelines,” said Paul Heidenreich, M.D., M.S., national chairman of the Get With The Guidelines Steering Committee and Professor of Medicine at Stanford University. “Shortening the time to effective resuscitation and maximizing post-resuscitation care is critical to patient survival.”
 
Get With The Guidelines-Resuscitation builds on the work of the American Heart Association’s National Registry of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation originally launched in 1999 and has collected in-hospital cardiac arrest data from more than 500 hospitals. Data from the registry and the quality program give participating hospitals feedback on their resuscitation practice and patient outcomes. In addition, the data helps improve research-based guidelines for in-hospital resuscitation.