LEWISTON — St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center has received the Get With The Guidelines — Heart Failure Bronze Quality Achievement Award from the American Heart Association.

The recognition signifies that St. Mary’s has reached an aggressive goal of treating heart failure patients for at least 90 days with 85 percent compliance to core standard levels of care outlined by the American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology secondary prevention guidelines for heart failure patients.

Get With The Guidelines – Heart Failure helps St. Mary’s staff develop and implement acute and secondary prevention guideline processes. The program includes quality-improvement measures such as care maps, discharge protocols, standing orders and measurement tools. This quick and efficient use of guideline tools will enable St. Mary’s to improve the quality of care it provides heart failure patients, save lives and ultimately, reduce health care costs by lowering the recurrence of heart attacks.