When Darylene Lehmer woke up on the morning of November 11, she was slow to get out of bed, and noticed she could not move her right leg.
“I wasn’t worried, but I did wonder why that leg wasn’t working,” recalls Lehmer. “I told my husband that I couldn’t move it, which I thought was the only thing wrong with me at the time. He later said I was slurring my words, too.”
Darylene’s husband took her to the emergency room at WellSpan Gettysburg Hospital. She received a CAT scan, and then she had a telemedicine consult with Grant Sorkin, M.D., a WellSpan neurosurgeon.
Before she knew it, the 72-year old kindergarten teacher was placed into a medical helicopter and flown to WellSpan York Hospital, where she was wheeled into surgery. Lehmer had a blood clot in the basilar artery, going up to her brain stem, which caused a stroke. She underwent a revascularization procedure to remove the clot.
Lehmer didn’t realize how serious the situation was until after the surgery, and she is thankful she was in good hands with her WellSpan care team.
“They were fantastic, they were kind, considerate, and they really must have known what they were doing,” said Lehmer. “There wasn’t one person that I came in contact with that I could have a negative thing to say about. They were just really wonderful people who did an amazing job.”
WellSpan Health receives 12 awards for heart, stroke care
WellSpan Health was recently honored with 12 American Heart Association/American Stroke Association Get With The Guidelines® (GWTG) awards at its six acute-care community hospitals. The awards recognize the hospitals’ achievements in stroke and heart-related care.
Get With The Guidelines offers quality-improvement measures, discharge protocols, standing orders and other measurement tools that make it easier to follow treatment guidelines that can help save lives and ultimately reduce overall health care costs by lowering readmission rates for patients with stroke and heart-related needs.
“These awards are a testament to how committed our care teams are when it comes to providing quality care to our community,” said Chris Lipp, vice president of heart and vascular services, WellSpan Health. “At WellSpan, we are committed to staying a healthy step ahead, by turning treatment guidelines into lifelines for our patients.”
The 12 Get With the Guidelines awards were received by the following hospitals:
WellSpan York Hospital
- Get With The Guidelines - Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement award and recognized on the Target: Stroke Honor Roll and Target: Stroke Honor Roll Advanced Therapy
- Get With The Guidelines - Heart Failure Gold Plus Quality Achievement award and recognized on the Target: Heart Failure Honor Roll
- Get With The Guidelines - Resuscitation Gold Plus Quality Achievement award
- Get With The Guidelines - AFib Silver Achievement award
WellSpan Gettysburg Hospital
- Get With The Guidelines - Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement award and recognized on the Target: Stroke Honor Roll Elite
WellSpan Good Samaritan Hospital
- Get With The Guidelines - Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement award and recognized on the Target: Stroke Honor Roll Elite
- Get With The Guidelines - Heart Failure Gold Plus Quality Achievement award and recognized on the Target: Heart Failure Honor Roll
WellSpan Ephrata Community Hospital
- Get With The Guidelines - Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement award and recognized on the Target: Stroke Honor Roll Elite
- Get With The Guidelines - Heart Failure Gold Plus Quality Achievement award and recognized on the Target: Heart Failure Honor Roll
WellSpan Chambersburg Hospital
- Get With The Guidelines - Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement award and recognized on the Target: Stroke Honor Roll
- Get With The Guidelines - Heart Failure Gold Plus Quality Achievement award and recognized on the Target: Heart Failure Honor Roll
WellSpan Waynesboro Hospital
- Get With The Guidelines - Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement
WellSpan earned these awards by meeting specific quality achievement measures for the diagnosis and treatment of stroke and heart-care-related patients for varying lengths of implementation.
For more information about WellSpan’s heart care, visit WellSpan.org/Heart. For more information on stroke care services at WellSpan, visit WellSpan.org/Stroke.
