Beverly Hospital is Stroke Certified
When someone has a stroke, they need emergency medical care to help protect their brain from extensive damage.
“Strokes can be devastating,” says Gautam Ganguly, MD, a Neurologist and the Stroke Program Medical Director for Beverly Hospital. “But the faster you treat them, the less likely you are to have a disability.”
That’s why at Beverly we’ve taken steps to make sure you and your loved ones get rapid stroke care close to home. Fast treatment gives you the best chance of recovering from a stroke.
Becoming a stroke center
In 2016, Beverly began the process of becoming what’s known as a certified stroke center—a hospital where patients receive the best stroke care, as outlined by the American Stroke and American Heart Association. Living near such a center means ambulances don’t have to take you to a hospital further away.
One thing a certified stroke center must be able to do is quickly diagnose an ischemic stroke and treat it with a drug called Tissue Plasminogen Activator (tPA), which dissolves the blood clots that cause most strokes. Hospital teams have only a short time window to give the drug. “At Beverly, we have the equipment and the medical staff in place to accurately diagnose a stroke in a timely manner, and we are successfully treating many stroke patients with tPA,” Dr. Ganguly says.
Some other steps Beverly takes to make sure strokes are treated quickly are:
- We have a dedicated stroke team that immediately responds when a stroke alert sounds in the hospital. That team includes neurologists and neurosurgeons who can treat stroke patients 24/7.
- We provide special stroke training to all staff members and specialized training to those who respond to strokes.
“We do all of this because we want our community to have immediate access to the best stroke care, as soon as possible, near their home,” Dr. Ganguly says.
