​For the fourth consecutive year, Floyd Medical Center has been honored by the American Heart Association for its care of stroke patients.

Floyd has received the Get With The Guidelines®-Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award and the Target: Stroke Elite Plus Honor Roll designation every year since 2015.

The quality achievement award recognizes the hospital's commitment and success in ensuring stroke patients receive the most appropriate treatment according to nationally recognized, research-based guidelines based on the latest scientific evidence.

To qualify for the Target: Stroke Elite Plus Honor Roll, hospitals must meet quality measures developed to reduce the time between a patient's arrival at the hospital and treatment with the clot-buster tissue plasminogen activator, or tPA, the only drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat ischemic stroke.

Debbie Fisher, Stroke Program Coordinator at Floyd, said this award reflects the hard work the staff has done to provide the best care for the stroke population in the community and to keep stroke survivors as independent as possible for the rest of their lives.

"We aim to teach everyone about their disease process and how to manage risk factors, and to live life to the fullest every day," said Fisher. "This award is given for consistently meeting the measures required to give advanced care to the stroke population. We are honored and are always working to improve our services for our patients here at Floyd."

According to the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, stroke is the fifth-leading cause of death and a primary cause of adult disability in the U.S. On average, someone in the U.S. suffers a stroke every 40 seconds, and nearly 795,000 people suffer a new or recurrent stroke each year.

“We are pleased to recognize Floyd Medical Center for its commitment to stroke care,” said Eric E. Smith, M.D., national chairman of the Get With The Guidelines Steering Committee and an associate professor of neurology at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. “Research has shown that hospitals adhering to clinical measures through the Get With The Guidelines quality improvement initiative can often see fewer readmissions and lower mortality rates.”

Get With The Guidelines® is the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s hospital-based quality improvement program that provides hospitals with tools and resources to increase adherence to the latest research-based guidelines.