Virginia Beach, Va. - November 8, 2006 - Sentara Virginia Beach General Hospitals stroke program has become the seventh in the state to earn a Gold Seal of Approval and achieve Disease Specific Care (DSC) Certification from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO).
By demonstrating excellence in quality and meeting the stringent criteria for certification, Sentara Virginia Beach General Hospital earned the certification.
JCAHO defines the designation as a certificate of distinction that recognizes primary stroke centers that have made exceptional efforts to foster better outcomes for stroke care. Specific criteria were developed in conjunction with the American Stroke Association.
"As a neurologist, I am extremely pleased about this certification," said Dr. Raymond G. Troiano, administrator of Sentara Virginia Beach General Hospital. "This certification demonstrates our commitment to quality as we care for stroke patients."
According to JCAHO, achievement of a Primary Stroke Center Certification is an unmatched education process that serves as an independent, unbiased validation of programs internal performance improvement initiatives.
Evaluators have determined that the program at Sentara Virginia Beach General Hospital: is patient-centered; employs performance measures to promote continuous improvement in health status; encourages interaction and communication among the provider team; requires the use of nationally recognized guidelines; and evaluates its care delivery sites to help put quality where it counts.
"We voluntarily pursued this comprehensive, independent evaluation to further enhance the safety and quality of the care we provide," said Dr. Sidney Mallenbaum, medical director of the stroke program. "Since we have been doing clinical research in acute stroke for over 10 years at Virginia Beach General, pursuing this certification was an appropriate next step to take for our hospital. This is an important milestone for our team. It demonstrates that we are willing to be benchmarked against the best programs in the country, and that we are committed to improvement," Mallenbaum said.
Currently, Sentara Virginia Beach General Hospital has two clinical trials ongoing for acute stroke victims and will be starting another National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke sponsored trial within the next few months.
Mallenbaum added that it's important for the public to recognize that they must seek treatment at the hospital within three hours after the onset of stroke symptoms. This is the window of time in which the only FDA-approved drug treatment for acute ischemic stroke must be administered. If people show up beyond 3 hours, the only treatment options are research trials which is partly why we started a research program in 1995, Mallenbaum said.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and National Center for Health Statistics, stroke is the nations number three cause of death and a leading cause of serious, long-term disability. About 700,000 Americans will have a stroke this year and 168,000 of them will die.
Sentara Virginia Beach General Hospital is the second Sentara hospital to receive Primary Stroke Certification. Sentara Norfolk General Hospital was the first hospital in the state to receive the designation. Sentara Norfolk General earned the stroke certification in 2005.
Sentara Healthcare is a premier not-for-profit health care provider in southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina.
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