By Kathleen Acuff

Hess

County officials and El Camino Hospital staff were confident last week that the hospital would pass a milestone on its way to joining other local hospitals in the ranks of primary stroke centers.

A review team from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (Jayco) was scheduled to pick up armfuls of documentation and observe hospital personnel’s new collaborative treatment system for stroke patients last Friday.

“At the end of the day, we’ll be certified,” Dr. Ronald Hess, the neurologist who heads up the El Camino project, said Thursday.

Because speed is the key to recovery from a stroke, the county’s Emergency Medical Services Agency has established a network of primary stroke centers, those certified by both Jayco and EMS as meeting the criteria for rapid response. Beginning next year, EMS will require the public and private ambulances it oversees to transport stroke victims to stroke centers in its network, scheduled to become operational Jan. 23. To keep from losing patients, every hospital with a shot at certification has been working to earn it.

Spokeswoman Joy Alexiou said EMS has already reviewed El Camino’s process. “They’ve met all our requirements,” she said. “They’ll be certified.”

Stanford Hospital, Good Samaritan, the Kaiser Foundation Hospitals of Santa Teresa and Santa Clara and O’Connor Hospital are certified primary stroke centers. In addition to El Camino, Community Hospital of Los Gatos, Regional Medical Center and Santa Clara Valley Hospital have applied for certification.

Hess said 185 El Camino nurses have been certified in the National Institutes of Health stroke scale. “That will give you an idea of the degree of cooperation and enthusiasm for this program in the hospital,” he said.

His team has been collecting data on patient outcomes and working to improve treatment methods and consistency of application. “If you look at Medicare providers’ mortality figures and outcomes data, El Camino comes out ahead of even the certified stroke centers,” Hess said. “Government data suggests we’re doing a better job than anyone else in the county.”

The hospital must meet 10 criteria by next year to retain certification. Stroke coordinator Ruby Garma described the four criteria the hospital must meet this year:

• Use of deep vein thrombosis

• Patients discharged on anti-thrombotics (such as aspirin)

• Patients with atrial fibrillation receive anti-coagulation therapy

• Use of tissue plasminogen activator to break up clots

Community groups can schedule presentations on stroke prevention and treatment by calling Ruby Garma at 988-7831.