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| Home > News > 2006 News |
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St. John's Stroke Center recognized as
quality leader
Dec. 19, 2006
St. John's is being recognized as a national stroke quality leader by
CareScience, a company that provides patient data analysis technology to
assist health systems measure clinical improvement, implement better
treatment processes and improve patient outcomes.
To receive the honor, a hospital must rank among the top 15% of hospitals
measured on the basis of lowest mortality and highest efficiency compared
with other facilities in the CareScience database.
The CareScience database is comprised of about 2600 facilities across 22
states accounting for 20 million patient admissions.
“CareScience is our source for what we think are valid risk-adjusted
outcomes of mortality, length-of-stay and complication rates,” explained Dr.
Alex Hover, St. John’s Quality medical director.
The company uses a sophisticated risk-adjustment methodology that utilizes a
variety of factors including demographics, patient selections (travel
distance, payor class, admission source, discharge disposition, transferred
patients) and clinical factors.
Over the last year, St. John’s has worked to decrease time to treatment for
stroke patients, which can improve both outcomes and help minimize the risk
of permanent disability or secondary stroke.
According to Eddie Spain, administrative director for St. John’s
Neurosciences, that means getting stroke patients treated sooner - from
emergency room assessment to CT scan imaging to having the image read to
administering a clot-busting drug when appropriate.
Stroke Coordinator Carol Beal, RN, explained that improving time to
treatment requires a commitment to making sure all stroke patients receive
the care set by national stroke benchmarks – benchmarks St. John’s Stroke
Center helped to create in 2002.
As one of 16 hospitals participating in the Stroke Practice Improvement
Network by the American Academy of Neurology, St. John’s joined with five
other SPIN programs to set the national standards. Those standards are now
part of the American Stroke Association’s core measures for stroke that is
measured in ‘Get With the Guidelines’ database for stroke.
St. John’s was also one of thirty hospitals that participated in JCAHO’s
Disease-Specific Care Stroke Pilot Measure Project. This was a pilot that
evaluated a standardized set of performance measures for stroke inpatient
care that had great potential for improving the quality of stroke care.
St. John’s Hospital recognized the need for stroke care in Southwest
Missouri and created St. John’s Stroke Center in 1999. The center helped
hospitals throughout the initiate their stroke programs. The center receives
stroke patients from the surrounding community hospitals in a 34 county area
in Missouri, and from Arkansas also.
Since 2000, St. John’s Primary Stroke Center, under the direction of Dr.
Thomas Habiger, Medical Director, has and participated in stroke research in
both the acute and community settings. The research projects have ranged
from trials for neuro-protectant drugs for the acute stroke patient, to
trials for drug comparison in the post stroke patient and most recently, a
trial for thrombolytic therapy for the acute stroke patient presenting to
the ETC within 3-9 hours of stroke symptom onset.
FOR
MEDIA INFORMATION, CONTACT ST. JOHN’S MEDIA RELATIONS AT 417-820-2426 OR CSCOTT@SPRG.MERCY.NET.
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