Quality improvement in stroke: evaluation of care processes and outcomes

The goal of the “Enhancing the quality of care pathways for stroke patients” study, is to develop a pragmatic framework to combine patient record based indicators, like Fever, Sugar (glycemia control) and Swallowing (dysphagia management) (FeSS-protocol), with Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) & Patient Reported Experience Measures (PREMs) and to understand barriers and facilitators for the integration in an electronic patient record (EPR). Since it is a longitudinal multicentric study, we will introduce this project in the hospitals of ‘Vlaams Ziekenhuisnetwerk KULeuven’ (VZN) and ‘Netwerk Klinische Paden’ (NKP), with the clinical coordination of the department of neurology at UZ Leuven. The study will be conducted via an interrupted time series design by performing a Breakthrough Improvement Collaborative (BIC) project. In collaboration with stroke neurologist from hospitals with a tradition in implementing care pathways and measuring outcome we will design a framework for a standardized approach to implement care processes in stroke. This framework will be the basis for hospitals in the VZN-network and beyond to develop an interdisciplinary stroke care program and measure process and outcome indicators obtained from the EPR.