Hedrick Medical Center and Wright Memorial Hospital Awarded for Efforts to Improve Rural Stroke Care

Chillicothe, Missouri – People who live in rural communities have a 40% higher likelihood of developing heart disease and face a 30% increased risk for stroke mortality—a gap that has grown over the past two decades. Hedrick Medical Center in Chillicothe and Wright Memorial Hospital in Trenton are committed to changing that.

For efforts to optimize stroke care and eliminate rural health care outcome disparities, both Hedrick and Wright Memorial recently received the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines® - Stroke Rural Recognition Gold award.

The American Heart Association, the world’s leading nonprofit organization focused on heart and brain health for all, recognizes the importance of health care services provided to people living in rural areas by rural hospitals that play a vital role in initiation of timely evidence-based care. For that reason, all rural hospitals participating in Get With The Guidelines - Stroke are eligible to receive award recognition based on a unique methodology focused on early acute stroke performance metrics.

“It’s a great honor that our teams at Hedrick and Wright Memorial are being recognized for the important work they do every day to improve the lives of residents in north central Missouri who are affected by stroke, giving them the best possible chance of recovery and survival,” said Catherine Hamilton, Administrator, Hedrick Medical Center and Wright Memorial Hospital. “Rural communities deserve to have access to excellent health care. I'm proud of our teams for their commitment to ensuring  we provide high quality stroke care, and this achievement validates that hard work.”

The award recognizes hospitals for their efforts toward acute stroke care excellence demonstrated by composite score compliance to guideline-directed care for intravenous thrombolytic therapy, timely hospital inter-facility transfer, dysphagia screening, symptom timeline and deficit assessment documentation, emergency medical services communication, brain imaging, and stroke expert consultation.

“Patients and health care professionals in rural communities often face unique health care challenges and opportunities,” said Karen E. Joynt Maddox, M.D., MPH, co-author on the American Heart Association’s presidential advisory on rural health. “Hedrick Medical Center and Wright Memorial Hospital have furthered this important work to improve care for all Americans, regardless of where they live.”