Norwalk Hospital honored for stroke treatment efforts

By Justin McGown / jmcgown@westfairinc.com

Norwalk Hospital, part of Nuvance Health, has earned the “Get With the Guidelines” Stroke Gold Plus Award for 2023. It was also inducted into this year’s Stroke Elite Honor Roll and the Type 2 Diabetes Honor Roll, all issued by the American Heart Association and American Stroke Association.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, every 40 seconds someone in the U.S. has a stroke, and every 3 minutes and 14 seconds someone dies of stroke. Each year, more than 795,000 people have a stroke, and roughly about 610,000 of these are first or new strokes. Stroke-related costs came to nearly $56.5 billion between 2018 and 2019 (the most recent years for measured data) and this total includes the cost of health-care services, medicines to treat stroke, and missed days of work.

The Honor Roll Elite indicates that the hospital ensured that at least 85% of patients with strokes were identified and able to begin treatment within 60 minutes of entering the hospital, while the Type 2 Diabetes Honor Roll indicates consistent quality treatment for stroke victims with the complicating health issue.

All the hospitals recognized by the Get With the Guidelines program displayed the same high level of care and attention to detail, regardless of the “medal” they earned. The “Gold” represents that Norwalk Hospital has consistently provided that service with skill and consistency for more than 24 months, with 12 months earning Silver and 90 days taking Bronze.

During that timeframe, the hospital must provide the latest in effective stroke care, including antithrombotic medication that shrinks the blood clots in the brain that cause strokes and have the ability to perform mechanical thrombectomies, which remove the clots through surgical means. The hospital must also consistently provide treatments within the timeframe where they are most effective and demonstrate effective smoking-cessation programs for stroke patients with a history of smoking.

Time is key because a few minutes’ delay can greatly impact the outcome for a patient. Norwalk Hospital was one of the first public hospitals in the region to offer some of the advanced therapies that have now become standard practice.

“Stroke is one of the most time sensitive disease processes,” said Dr. Joshua Marcus, a neurosurgeon that performs mechanical thrombectomies at Norwalk Hospital. “Patients need to get to the hospital that can deliver care as quickly as possible.”

Dr. Daryl Story, the neurology section chief and stroke director at Norwalk Hospital, was modest about the achievement.

“It’s really making sure that we’re doing all of the really essential fundamentals in a very consistent way, and we’ve gotten very good at that,” Story said. “It’s really not too difficult after being a stroke center for 20 years to really have that drilled into the culture of everyone that comes in contact with the stroke patient. Everyone knows the playbook.”

Michele Lecardo, a registered nurse and Norwalk Hospital’s stroke coordinator, said she appreciated the recognition but was motivated by the work itself.

“This is why I love doing my Job,”