Cape Fear Valley Medical Center has received the Get With The Guidelines® – Heart Failure Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award from the American Heart Association.

The honor signifies “commitment to ensuring heart failure patients receive the most appropriate treatment according to nationally recognized, research-based guidelines for treatment,” a press release said. UItimately, the goal of following these treatment measures is to speed up recovery times and reduce hospital readmissions for heart failure patients. 

Qualifying hospitals are ones that comply with those performance measures at a set level for a year. Some of those measures are “evaluation of the proper use of medications and aggressive-risk-reduction therapies,” the release said. 

Additionally, patients from the institutions should receive education on managing their health, schedule follow-up visits to ensure their care, and learn about other transition interventions.