St. Mary's Regional Medical Center Awarded for Efforts to Improve Rural Stroke Care
People who live in rural communities live an average of three years fewer than urban counterparts and have a 40% higher likelihood of developing heart disease and face a 30% increased ri
sk for stroke mortality — a gap that has grown over the past two decades.[1],[2] St. Mary's Regional Medical Center is committed to changing that.
For efforts to optimize stroke care and eliminate rural healthcare outcome disparities, St. Mary's Regional Medical Center has received the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines® - Stroke Rural Recognition silver award.
The American Heart Association®, the world’s leading nonprofit organization focused on heart and brain health for all, recognizes the importance of healthcare services provided to people living in rural areas by rural hospitals that play a vital role in initiation of timely evidence-based care. For that reason, all rural hospitals participating in Get With The Guidelines - Stroke are eligible to receive award recognition based on a unique methodology focused on early acute stroke performance metrics.
Stroke Care at St. Mary's Regional
To learn more about Stroke Care services at St. Mary's Regional, visit our service page.
The award recognizes hospitals for their efforts toward acute stroke care excellence demonstrated by composite score compliance to guideline-directed care for intravenous thrombolytic therapy, timely hospital inter-facility transfer, dysphagia screening, symptom timeline and deficit assessment documentation, emergency medical services communication, brain imaging and stroke expert consultation.
“Patients and healthcare professionals in Enid, OK, face unique healthcare challenges and opportunities,” said Karen E. Joynt Maddox, M.D., MPH, volunteer expert for the American Heart Association, co-author on “Call to Action: Rural Health: A Presidential Advisory From the American Heart Association and American Stroke Association” and co-director of the Center for Health Economics and Policy at the Institute for Public Health at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. “St. Mary's Regional Medical Center has furthered this important work to improve care for all Americans, regardless of where they live.”
[1] American Heart Association. American Heart Association issues call to action for addressing inequities in rural health. February 10, 2020. https://newsroom.heart.org/news/american-heart-association-issues-call-t... American Heart Association. Public Health AmeriCorps to address health inequity in rural communities. April 6, 2022. https://newsroom.heart.org/news/public-health-americorps-to-address-heal....
[2] Harrington R, et al. Call to Action: Rural Health: A Presidential Advisory From the American Heart Association and American Stroke Association. Circulation. 2020;141:e615–e644.