When in rome, do like the Romans: certifying stroke centers with the rod of aesculapius or the medical caduceus of hermes?

Feasibility of Certified Quality Management in a Comprehensive Stroke Care Network Using Telemedicine: STENO Project

Background

Stroke care networks with and without telemedicine have been established in several countries over the last decade to provide specialized stroke expertise to patients in rural areas. Acute consultation is a first step in the management of stroke, but not the only one. Methods of standardization of care and treatment are much needed. So far, quality management systems have only been used for single stroke units. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first stroke network worldwide to aim for certification of a network-wide quality management system.

Methods

The Stroke Network Using Telemedicine in Northern Bavaria (STENO), currently with 20 associated medical institutions, is one of the world's largest stroke networks, caring for over 5000 stroke patients each year. In 2010, we initiated the implementation of a network-wide ‘total’ quality management system according to ISO standard 9001:2008 in cooperation with the German Stroke Society and a third-party certification organization (LGA InterCert).

Results

Certification according to ISO 9001:2008 was awarded in March 2011 and maintained over a complete certification cycle of 3 years without major deviation from the norm in three external third-party audits. Thrombolysis rate significantly increased from 8·2% (2009) to 12·8% (2012).

Conclusions

Certified quality management within a large stroke network using telemedicine is possible and might improve stroke care procedures and thrombolysis rates. Outcome studies comparing conventional stroke care and telestroke care are inevitable.

Comparison of performance achievement award recognition with primary stroke center certification for acute ischemic stroke care

Background

Hospital certification and recognition programs represent 2 independent but commonly used systems to distinguish hospitals, yet they have not been directly compared. This study assessed acute ischemic stroke quality of care measure conformity by hospitals receiving Primary Stroke Center (PSC) certification and those receiving the American Heart Association's Get With The Guidelines‐Stroke (GWTG‐Stroke) Performance Achievement Award (PAA) recognition.

Methods and Results

The patient and hospital characteristics as well as performance/quality measures for acute ischemic stroke from 1356 hospitals participating in the GWTG‐Stroke Program 2010–2012 were compared. Hospitals were classified as PAA+/PSC+ (hospitals n=410, patients n=169 302), PAA+/PSC− (n=415, n=129 454), PAA−/PSC+ (n=88, n=26 386), and PAA−/PSC− (n=443, n=75 565). A comprehensive set of stroke measures were compared with adjustment for patient and hospital characteristics. Patient characteristics were similar by PAA and PSC status but PAA−/PSC− hospitals were more likely to be smaller and nonteaching. Measure conformity was highest for PAA+/PSC+ and PAA+/PSC− hospitals, intermediate for PAA−/PSC+ hospitals, and lowest for PAA−/PSC− hospitals (all‐or‐none care measure 91.2%, 91.2%, 84.3%, and 76.9%, respectively). After adjustment for patient and hospital characteristics, PAA+/PSC+, PAA+/PSC−, and PAA−/PSC+ hospitals had 3.15 (95% CIs 2.86 to 3.47); 3.23 (2.93 to 3.56) and 1.72 (1.47 to 2.00), higher odds for providing all indicated stroke performance measures to patients compared with PAA−/PSC− hospitals.

Conclusions

While both PSC certification and GWTG‐Stroke PAA recognition identified hospitals providing higher conformity with care measures for patients hospitalized with acute ischemic stroke, PAA recognition was a more robust identifier of hospitals with better performance.