Advice on quitting smoking
Why is this important?
Smoking causes your blood vessels to become thick. Fat and plaque stick to the wall of these blood vessels, which makes it harder for blood to flow to the heart. Reduced blood flow to your heart may result in chest pain and high blood pressure and increase your heart rate. Simply put, smoking increases your risk for a heart attack, heart failure or stroke. It is important that patients be given information on how to quit smoking before they leave the hospital.
How WellSpan Compares
Last year, York Hospital and Gettysburg Hospital treated 921 patients with heart failure. The following shows the percentage of patients who were admitted to a WellSpan hospital for treatment of heart failure, who were smokers, and who were given professional advice on how to quit smoking before leaving the hospital.
Unit of Measurement:
Percentage
A higher score is better than a lower score.
What we are doing to improve our performance.
A team of WellSpan doctors, nurses and other care givers, known as the “Congestive Heart Failure Clinical Effectiveness Team,” meets regularly to review important information and strategies for improving care for congestive heart failure (CHF) patients. These individuals continue to monitor current medical literature on CHF and WellSpan’s performance in treating it.
WellSpan has a dedicated Tobacco Cessation Team comprised of respiratory therapists and counselors who ask all tobacco users admitted to the hospital if they would like to quit and provides important assistance in doing so.
Gettysburg Hospital has been 100% compliant since October 2005.
York Hospital is compliant except when need exceeds available counselors.