24.02.14
Stroke data improving care quality
A national audit programme for stroke data is helping improve quality of care, according to a new report.
The Sentinel Stroke National Audit Programme (SSNAP) is the “most comprehensive and reliable source of information about the performance of stroke services in England, Wales and Northern Ireland”, measuring the quality of stroke services against evidence-based standards and supporting staff to make improvements.
Professor Tony Rudd CBE, chair of the Intercollegiate stroke working party, said: “It is a fantastic achievement by all those hospital teams who contributed data to this report – over 17,000 records were available for analysis in the period from June to September 2013. We estimate that 80,000 patients are admitted to hospital each year in England, and so, already, with SSNAP we are achieving very high levels of case ascertainment.
“The next stages of SSNAP are also very ambitious, we will, in due course, be able to report on the care of all stroke patients admitted to hospital and define the care they received. We will also be able to report on outcomes such as mortality and disability.
“The effort of all the participating hospital teams is acknowledged and this high level of participation and high quality data will enable a much stronger case to be made for improvements in stroke care and to ensure that patients and clinicians are getting the best out of the services.”
SSNAP data are reported in various formats to make it useful to a wide range of audiences – including interactive maps, patient and carer focused reports, slideshows and formal documents.
SSNAP measures the entire patient care pathway, from admission to hospital through to six months post-stroke; hospitals are compared against evidence based standards and the national average.
Huge improvements have been made in the quality of stroke care and services over the past years as measured by previous national stroke audits and it is anticipated that similar improvements will be demonstrated through future SSNAP quarterly reports.
SSNAP is guided by the Intercollegiate stroke working party (ICSWP) and delivered by the Stroke Programme in the RCP. It is commissioned by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP) until March 2015. SSNAP builds on the work of the National Sentinel Stroke Audit (NSSA) and the Stroke Improvement National Audit Programme (SINAP). SSNAP is the chosen method for collection of data about stroke care in the NHS Outcomes Framework and the CCG Outcomes Indicator Set.
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