Get With The Guidelines® - Stroke Overview

Speeding Stroke Care: Get with the Guidelines®- Stroke

Healthier patients. Healthier hospitals.

By improving stroke care, our Get With The Guidelines®- Stroke program benefits patients as well as hospitals. Numerous published studies demonstrate the program's success in improving patient outcomes. Since the program's start in 2003, over 2,000 hospitals have entered more than 5 million patient records into the Get With The Guidelines®- Stroke database. But hospitals see benefits as well.

Get With The Guidelines®- Stroke supports hospitals in many ways, including:

  • Access to the most up-to-date research and scientific publications
  • Professional education opportunities, such as workshops and webinars
  • Clinical tools and resources
  • Patient education resources
  • QI field staff support
  • A competitive advantage in the healthcare marketplace
  • National and local recognition for hospital team program achievement
  • Submission of CMS Core Stroke Measures and other data
  • Performance feedback reporting for continuous quality improvement

Data submission and feedback reporting are performed using the American Heart Association's Get With The Guidelines Registry (IRP)(link opens in new window).

Download Get With The Guidelines®- Stroke fact sheets and forms here. 

Get Involved: Steps to Get Started

  1. Contact your local Get With The Guidelines® representative to begin the enrollment process. Your local representative will be able to assist you through the contracting process and answer any questions you may have.
  2. When you are ready, Join Now(link opens in new window) to enroll in the Get With The Guidelines®- Stroke program. For multi-site enrollment, complete the Hospital Corporation Contract(link opens in new window)
  3. Assemble your multidisciplinary team to determine roles and processes for entering patient data.
  4. Create your baseline by entering 30 records into the Patient Management Tool (PMT) to assess your treatment rates.
  5. Use the PMT benchmarking reports to identify areas for improvement and refine processes and protocols to ensure they are in line with the guidelines.
  6. Identify areas for improvement.
  7. Refine processes and protocols to ensure they are in line with the guidelines.
  8. Brainstorm with your team to find ways to improve your hospital's treatment rates.
  9. Test your ideas. Remember that changes do not have to be large. Sometimes it works best to start small and build on success.
  10. Repeat steps 8 and 9 until your team is happy with your treatment rates and your hospital is eligible for recognition.(link opens in new window)
  11. Celebrate(link opens in new window) your success and spread the word!

Get With The Guidelines®- Stroke has been funded in the past through support from Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Boeringher-Ingelheim, and Merck.

Research Opportunity Overview

Researchers also have the opportunity to conduct investigator-led research projects using data from the Get With The Guidelines®- Stroke program. Research projects are hypothesis-driven studies that are developed into manuscripts suitable for peer-reviewed publication.

For an overview of data housed in the Stroke Patient Management Tool, please refer to the Stroke Case Record Form (PDF). To submit a research proposal for the Get With The Guidelines®- Stroke program, email a completed Get With The Guidelines Data Request Form (download) to [email protected].