Honors and achievements

The UF Health Shands Comprehensive Stroke Center has been recognized by numerous health care industry leaders.

The Joint Commission

The UF Health Shands Comprehensive Stroke Center earned national comprehensive stroke center certification from The Joint Commission in 2014. UF Health is one of just 12 centers in the state and 217 in the nation with this certification.

The UF Health Shands Comprehensive Stroke Center joins an elite group of hospitals focused on quality and effective stroke care proven to improve patients’ outcomes. These stroke centers, recognized as industry leaders, set the national agenda in highly specialized stroke care.

Get With the Guidelines - Stroke

Get With the Guidelines is a program that helps ensure consistent application of the most recent American Heart Association/American Stroke Association scientific guidelines for patient treatment. UF Health Shands Hospital has received a 2023 Get With The Guidelines® Stroke Gold Plus, Target Stroke Honor Roll, Target Stroke Advanced Therapy Honor Roll and Target Type 2 Diabetes Honor Roll from the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association for its commitment to and success in implementing excellent care for stroke patients. “Gold Plus” is the highest level of recognition possible and signifies consistent adherence to those quality measures over the course of at least 24 consecutive months.

UF Health Shands Comprehensive Stroke Center is certified by the American Stroke Association/American Heart Association.

These quality measures include aggressive use of medications, such as antithrombotics and cholesterol reducing drugs; anticoagulation therapy; deep vein thrombosis prophylaxis and smoking cessation counseling. Each measure is aimed at reducing death and disability and improving stroke patients outcomes. Minutes matter when a stroke happens so timely treatment is critical to recovery and to limiting permanent, life-altering disabilities.

More honors and achievements

• The UF Health Shands Comprenhensive Stroke Center also received the Target Stroke Honor Roll Elite Plus, an elevated distinction through the Get With The Guidelines®-Stroke program. Only current achievement award-winning hospitals are eligible for this honor.
• The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education has approved one neurosurgical endovascular fellowship for the UF Department of Neurosurgery and three vascular fellowships for the UF Department of Neurology.