Swedish Edmonds announced Wednesday that it has received a national award recognizing the hospital’s advanced stroke treatment efforts.

The hospital received the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Gold Plus Achievement Award and also qualified for recognition on the Target: Stroke Elite Plus Honor Roll.

The award recognizes the hospital’s commitment to providing the most appropriate stroke treatment according to nationally recognized, research-based guidelines based on the latest scientific evidence, the Swedish Edmonds announcement said. Hospitals must achieve 85 percent or higher adherence to all Get With The Guidelines-Stroke achievement indicators for two or more consecutive years and achieve 75 percent or higher compliance with five of eight Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Quality measures to receive the Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award.

“Time is brain, and a stroke patient loses 1.9 million neurons each minute stroke treatment is delayed” said Kristen McDonald with the Stroke and Trauma program, Swedish Edmonds. “We take great pride in our stroke program here at Swedish Edmonds; being honored for giving excellent patient care is the best recognition a hospital can get.

“This recognition further demonstrates our commitment to delivering advanced stroke treatments to patients quickly and safely and further reinforces our team’s hard work,” McDonald added.

Additionally, Swedish Edmonds qualified for the Target: Stroke Honor Roll Elite Plus. To do this, hospitals must meet quality measures developed to reduce the time between the 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.

If given intravenously in the first three hours after the start of stroke symptoms, tPA has been shown to significantly reduce the effects of stroke and lessen the chance of permanent disability. Swedish Edmonds earned the award by meeting specific quality achievement measures for the diagnosis and treatment of stroke patients at a set level for a designated period.

These quality measures are designed to help hospital teams follow the most up-to-date, evidence-based guidelines with the goal of speeding recovery and reducing death and disability for stroke patients.

According to the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, stroke is the number five cause of death and a leading cause of adult disability in the United States. On average, someone in the U.S. suffers a stroke every 40 seconds, someone dies of a stroke every four minutes, and nearly 800,000 people suffer a new or recurrent stroke each year.