Get With The Guidelines-Resuscitation
is the premier quality improvement program
for more than 300 hospitals across the country.
It collects data from the hospitals
about how patients who suffer cardiac arrest
are resuscitated and whether they
get with the guidelines.
But most importantly, it tracks the variability in practice
that impacts survival and good neurologic survival
after cardiac arrest.
The future for Get With The Guidelines-
Resuscitation is bright
In 2000, the American Heart Association
started collecting information from more than 300 hospitals
in a program that was called the American Heart Association
National Registry for CPR.
In 2010 that then transitioned into the
Get With The Guidelines-Resuscitation as part of the
suite of programs that's helping hospitals
meet accreditation and quality improvement goals
across the nation.
We started with just following cardiac arrests
and then incrementally added in the present
medical emergency team response before arrest,
and also a post-cardiac arrest component
that now tracks patients throughout all phases
of resuscitation.
In the future, we're gonna be adding real quality pieces
that allow hospitals to really gauge their performance,
decrease variability, meet accreditation guidelines,
and they'll even offer awards that will
allow people to know, allow the hospitals to know,
their progress along that line,
going for the gold, as they move towards
improving survival outcomes from cardiac arrests.
Participation in Get With The Guidelines-Resuscitation
means a lot to each hospital that participates
for their own quality improvement.
For infants, children, adolescents, and adults
through the whole spectrum of care from
before the resuscitation, medical emergency teams,
during the cardiac arrest, cardio-pulmonary arrest,
and following cardiac arrests with a post-cardiac arrest
care module.
By collecting that data they can figure out
the who, what, where, why, and when of resuscitation
in their hospital and then benchmark
and compare it to other hospitals
that have similar severity of illness
and similar configurations to their own hospital.
Through that process they can help each other
improve the care for those patients
that suffer cardiac arrest.
And because more than 200,000 patients
arrest in hospital every year,
that's a lot of patients and a lot of things
that can be improved.
Get With The Guidelines-Resuscitation has a
research component for neonates, infants,
children, adults, and all through the spectrum.
And this research is really changing the way
we resuscitate patients from cardiac arrest.
The data registry provides quality improvement information
back to the hospitals immediately,
but that information is pooled over the last 10 years
and the trends in management and how
getting with the guidelines impacts outcome is tracked
and analyzed, then published by peer-review publication
and those publications change the AHA guidelines
for cardio-pulmonary arrest care across the nation
and across the world.
Quality of care has many meanings.
For the hospital itself, it's that they're doing
the best job they can to get with the guidelines
and save patients' lives.
For the individual patient, whether they're an
infant, child, adolescent, or adult,
it means that they're receiving the best care.
That they're receiving care that complies
with the best guidelines and it's implemented
by the teams in the hospital to get
the best outcome they can be.
We know that survival after cardiac arrest
is not 100% and it probably never will be.
But we know that there is some very simple things
pre-arrest, during arrest, and after arrest
that can be done to maximize the chance
of a good survival.
Get With The Guidelines-Resuscitation ensures
that each hospital and each patient
knows what that is, knows how they're doing,
and knows what they need to do
to get the best care for that patient.