National Stroke Audit Acute Services
March 27, 2013
The National Stroke Audit is an important quality improvement initiative driven by the National Stroke Foundation (NSF). The National Stroke Audit provides the statistical evidence required to drive change by highlighting strengths and weaknesses in current stroke services, providing a focus for quality improvement activities.
The 2013 acute audit follows on from the highly successful 2007, 2009 and 2011 National Audit of Acute Stroke Services, and the subsequent National Audit of Rehabilitation Services performed in 2008, 2010 and 2012.
The National Stroke Audit Program comprises two components: An Organisational Survey of acute stroke services across Australia. The survey considers the resources required to deliver evidence based stroke care such as stroke units, comprehensive assessment by multidisciplinary teams and team meetings.
The Clinical Audit involves a retrospective review of consecutive patient case notes admitted to participating hospitals. It also examines the delivery of evidence-based processes of care such as delivery of tPA for eligible patients, stroke unit care, timely assessment by allied health and discharge planning.
Involvement in the NSF National Audit Program allows participating hospitals to benchmark themselves against other similar hospitals and to see how well they are delivering the evidence-based recommendations from national guidelines. National reports containing an overview of de-identified aggregated information will be released in the last quarter of the year.
Each participating site will also receive feedback through confidential site specific reports – which integrate organisational and clinical audit data. This feedback will inform service planning and improvement. The more hospitals that participate in the process, the more powerful (representative) the audit data becomes.
Participation supports ongoing quality improvement and will help stroke services identify where to prioritise attention. And overall, we believe that the national audit will grow interest and participation in stroke interest groups and networks.
The 2013 acute audit follows on from the highly successful 2007, 2009 and 2011 National Audit of Acute Stroke Services, and the subsequent National Audit of Rehabilitation Services performed in 2008, 2010 and 2012.
The National Stroke Audit Program comprises two components: An Organisational Survey of acute stroke services across Australia. The survey considers the resources required to deliver evidence based stroke care such as stroke units, comprehensive assessment by multidisciplinary teams and team meetings.
The Clinical Audit involves a retrospective review of consecutive patient case notes admitted to participating hospitals. It also examines the delivery of evidence-based processes of care such as delivery of tPA for eligible patients, stroke unit care, timely assessment by allied health and discharge planning.
Involvement in the NSF National Audit Program allows participating hospitals to benchmark themselves against other similar hospitals and to see how well they are delivering the evidence-based recommendations from national guidelines. National reports containing an overview of de-identified aggregated information will be released in the last quarter of the year.
Each participating site will also receive feedback through confidential site specific reports – which integrate organisational and clinical audit data. This feedback will inform service planning and improvement. The more hospitals that participate in the process, the more powerful (representative) the audit data becomes.
Participation supports ongoing quality improvement and will help stroke services identify where to prioritise attention. And overall, we believe that the national audit will grow interest and participation in stroke interest groups and networks.