In 2014, the Joint Commission renewed Stanford Hospital's Comprehensive Stroke Center status based on its effectiveness in meeting guidelines for providing rapid and effective stroke care, according to presenter Dr. Aleksandrs Kalnins. To continue improving the rapid diagnosis and delivery of stroke therapy in the acute setting, the institution assembled a multidisciplinary team to evaluate methods for further improvements based on lean process improvement principles. These efforts focused on rapid triage and CT acquisition in acute stroke patients who walk into the emergency department (ED) without ambulance prenotification of a stroke, he said.
After applying the resulting process improvement plan, the institution was able to realize significant time savings by decreasing the amount of steps for managing patients once a stroke code is called in the ED, Kalnins said. The mean time gap from a stroke code being given to a patient to when he or she received a CT scan dropped by more than 50%, from 20.84 minutes to 9.55 minutes, according to the team.
"Our project also reiterates the importance of the radiologist being intricately involved in hospital process improvements and thereby reinforces our role in patient care, as well as our ability to significantly contribute to the improvement of patient outcomes," Kalnins told AuntMinnie.com.
