An initiative from the American Heart Association (AHA) and American Stroke Association (ASA) received recognition as one of three finalists for the annual Hearst Health Prize, which is awarded to an organization or individual involved in population health management.
The finalists will present their programs at the Population Health Colloquium in Philadelphia on March 27. The winner will be announced the next day and will receive $100,000. Hearst Health and the Jefferson College of Population Health at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia sponsor the award.
The AHA and ASA were chosen for the “Target: Stroke” initiative that focuses on increasing the number of eligible stroke patients receiving tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) within the specified time frame. More than 1,200 hospitals in the U.S. are part of the program.
Hearst Health said in a news release that 75 percent of patients from those hospitals are treated within the 60-minute door-to-needle timeframe that has been shown to lower in-hospital mortality and reduce long-term disability. In 2016, 46.2 percent of hospitals received recognition for achieving their treatment goals, up from 8.9 percent in 2010.
The other finalists are the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative at Stanford University and the Mental Health Integration program at Intermountain Healthcare.
The following organizations (in alphabetical order) received honorable mention: Baylor College of Medicine, Children’s Health System of Texas, Corporation for Supportive Housing, Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University, Metropolitan Chicago Breast Cancer Task Force, New York-Presbyterian Hospital and Rush University Medical Center.
In March 2016, Community Care of North Carolina won the inaugural Hearst Health Prize for its transactional care model for the state’s Medicaid recipients. Centering Healthcare Institute in Boston and Jersey City Medical Center-Barnabas Health in Jersey City were the other finalists.
Executive Editor
Tim Casey joined TriMed Media Group in 2015 as Executive Editor. For the previous four years, he worked as an editor and writer for HMP Communications, primarily focused on covering managed care issues and reporting from medical and health care conferences. He was also a staff reporter at the Sacramento Bee for more than four years covering professional, college and high school sports. He earned his undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Notre Dame and his MBA degree from Georgetown University.