UNC Hospitals receives NCDR ACTION Registry-GWTG Silver Performance Achievement Award

UNC Hospitals has received the American College of Cardiology Foundation's NCDR ACTION Registry-GWTG Silver Performance Achievement Award for 2010 - one of only 26 hospitals nationwide to do so.

The award recognizes UNC Hospitals' commitment and success in implementing a higher standard of care for heart attack patients, and signifies that UNC Hospitals has reached an aggressive goal of treating coronary artery disease patients with 85 percent compliance to core standard levels of care outlined by the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association clinical guidelines and recommendations.

To receive the ACTION Registry-GWTG Silver Performance Achievement Award, UNC Hospitals consistently followed the treatment guidelines in ACTION Registry-GWTG for 12 consecutive months. These include aggressive use of medications like cholesterol-lowering drugs, beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors, aspirin, and anticoagulants in the hospital.

"The American College of Cardiology Foundation and the American Heart Association commend UNC Hospitals for its success in implementing standards of care and protocols. The full implementation of acute and secondary prevention guideline-recommended therapy is a critical step in saving the lives and improving outcomes of heart attack patients," Gregg C. Fonarow, MD, ACTION Registry-GWTG Steering Committee Chairperson and Director of Ahmanson-UCLA Cardiomyopathy Center.

"The time is right for UNC Hospitals to be focused on improving the quality of cardiovascular care by implementing ACTION Registry-GWTG. The number of acute myocardial infarction patients eligible for treatment is expected to grow over the next decade due to increasing incidence of heart disease and a large aging population," said Cam Patterson, MD, MBA, UNC's chief of cardiology and director of the UNC McAllister Heart Institute.

Created by the merger of the American College of Cardiology Foundation's NCDR ACTION Registry® and the American Heart Association's Get With The Guidelines-CAD program, ACTION Registry-GWTG combines the best of both programs into a single, unified national registry. The new registry joins the robust data collection and quality reporting features of the ACTION Registry with the collaborative models, unique tools, and quality improvement techniques of the GWTG-CAD program. With the collective strengths of these two programs, ACTION Registry-GWTG empowers health care provider teams to consistently treat heart attack patient according to the most current, science-based guidelines; and establishes a national standard for understanding and improving the quality, safety, and outcomes of care provided for patients with coronary artery disease, specifically high-risk STEMI and NSTEMI patients.