Covenant Once Again Achieves American Heart Association Top Honor for Quality Stroke Care

Covenant HealthCare once again achieved top honors from the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association receiving the Get With The Guidelines® Target: Stroke Honor Roll Elite Plus Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award. The award recognizes the hospital’s commitment to ensuring stroke patients receive the most appropriate treatment according to nationally recognized, research-based guidelines based on the latest scientific evidence.

Recently a flag was raised by Bay City stroke survivor, Troy Tackett, in front of the Covenant main campus at 700 Cooper. The flag will fly in honor of the more than 600 patients who received stroke care at Covenant in the past year.

“Two years ago, in 2018, I had a double stroke- a shower- on both sides of my brain,” said Tackett at the flag raising. “I was at work and got to Covenant. When I was just arriving, I remembered that I went blind, and I thought ‘this is it.’ But I’m a man of faith, and I believe God puts me in the right place at the right time when tragedy strikes. And I’m going to tell you, the thirty minutes… it’s serious.”

“I’m grateful to Melissa and Dr. Smith who were on that day [and all the nurses], that they reacted and that they had their program down solid so I can be here two years later. Not only to survive, but [also] come back from therapy, back playing my guitar, back playing my drums, I’m back working- and in fact got promoted. I’m a blessed man.”

“This award is tied directly to meeting quality measures for stroke care including providing lifesaving thrombolytic medication to patients within 30 minutes of arriving to our hospital,” says Melissa Duchene, RN, BSN, Stroke Program Administrator at Covenant HealthCare. “Our Stroke Team works diligently every day to ensure we provide the highest quality care to every patient who enters our hospital. This award shows our dedication to patients and the community.”

According to the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, stroke is the No. 5 cause of death and a leading cause of adult disability in the United States. On average, someone in the U.S. suffers a stroke every 40 seconds and nearly 795,000 people suffer a new or recurrent stroke each year.