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 adult patients who suffer cardiac arrests in the hospital.  

To qualify for the award, hospitals must comply with the quality measures for two or more consecutive years. SGMC has received the gold award consecutively for the past four years.

More than 200,000 adults and children have an in-hospital cardiac arrest each year, according to the AHA. The GWTG-R program was developed with the goal to save lives of those who experience in-hospitalcardiac 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.

“The team at the Dasher Heart Center is committed to helping our patients have the best possible outcomes. Years ago, SGMC’s leadership realized the benefits of holding our staff to the impeccable standards set by this program. Our teams use the protocols regularly and lives have been saved as a result,” said C. Ross Berry, SGMC’s CEO.

“We are pleased to recognize SGMC for their commitment to following these guidelines,” said Eric E. Smith, M.D., national chairman of the GWTG Steering Committee and an associate professor of neurology at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. “Shortening the time to effective resuscitation and maximizing post-resuscitation care is critical to patient survival.”

GTWG-R builds on the work of the AHA’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.