Mountain Division's advanced stroke care leads to "Elite" recognition at six hospitals

The Mountain Division of HCA Healthcare, with care sites in Alaska, Idaho and Utah, announced that six of its hospitals earned Get With the Guidelines Stroke Gold Plus recognition for consistent adherence to the latest research-driven guidelines and measurement for stroke care. The recognition comes from the American Heart Association (AHA).

“We’ve put a huge focus on strengthening our stroke care program across Alaska, Idaho and Utah,” said Dr. Filip Roos, chief medical officer of the Mountain Division. “We’re proud of this recognition, but even more proud to have earned the trust of patients experiencing a stroke emergency. By embracing care technology and new treatments, we’ve completely transformed stroke care in our network.”

Utah’s St. Mark’s Hospital, Ogden Regional Medical Center, Lakeview Hospital and Timpanogos Regional Hospital received the AHA recognition, along with Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center (EIRMC) in Idaho Falls and Alaska Regional Hospital in Anchorage. All six facilities received recognition at the Elite Plus level, meaning that for at least two consecutive years, 75% of applicable patients had a door-to-needle time of 45 minutes or less, and 50% had a door-to-needle time of no more than 30 minutes.

Door-to-needle is an important measure of the time elapsed before clot-busting drugs are administered. Every minute that a stroke goes untreated, an estimated 1.9 million brain cells are damaged.

“When we can deliver clot-busting treatments to patients early in their stroke emergency,” Dr. Roos added, “we drastically improve the odds of a favorable outcome. That’s why our clinicians and care team members have been so bought into a number of changes we’ve made to enhance our care and benefit patients.”

Roos cited several specific enhancements to the Mountain Division’s stroke program that led to improvements in care delivery:

• In 2022, the division launched a “Direct Beam-In” program, leveraging telehealth technology to frontload the neurologist’s assessment in coordination with EMS teams, ER providers and clinical staff. This enables care teams to establish a coordinated plan for thrombolytic administration or secondary treatment modalities for the patient.
• Starting in 2022, all Mountain Division hospitals and freestanding emergency rooms transitioned to an alternative thrombolytic drug that takes just seconds to administer. Their hospitals were the first in Utah and Idaho to adopt this treatment, and among the first in Alaska.
• The division also introduced a multidisciplinary team that reviews every thrombolytic administration to help identify best practices and areas for improvement.

In addition to the Stroke Elite Plus recognition, St. Mark’s, Ogden Regional and EIRMC also made the Honor Roll for Advanced Therapy, which is based on door-to-device times for direct and transferred patients. Those hospitals, along with Lakeview and Alaska Regional, also received recognition for meeting evidence-based standards in care for patients with Type 2 Diabetes when hospitalized for CVD or Stroke.

In all, the Mountain Division has 11 hospitals and more than 100 total sites of care. It is one of 15 divisions of HCA Healthcare, one of the nation’s leading providers of health services. Division leaders say the knowledge, data and best practices from HCA Healthcare’s 43 million annual patient interactions help to continually enhance the care delivered by local teams in Alaska, Idaho and Utah.

Read the methodology for the AHA’s Get With the Guidelines program.