Stroke Ready - Optimizing Acute Stroke Care
Stroke Ready - Optimizing Acute Stroke Care
The study aims to increase acute stroke treatment rates in Flint, Michigan through a two-pronged approach of hospital and community level interventions. It also aims to inform future stroke preparedness interventions by exploring the relative importance of hospital optimization and community interventions.
In this study, the participants who received the intervention are a separate group from those analyzed in the outcome measures. Stroke Ready was a multilevel intervention that included a hospital based emergency department optimization component conducted from October 2017 through May 2018 and a community based stroke preparedness intervention conducted from June 2018 through March 2020. The emergency department component focused on improving hospital level acute stroke care processes and did not involve participant enrollment, individual level data collection, or participant level outcomes. Stroke education sessions were offered to community members in quadrant based groups between 2017 and 2020, but this was simply for administrative purposes, not for analytical distinctions among the groups. Demographic information was collected based on workshop educators' perceptions of those in attendance and not taken at the individual level.
Outcome measures about acute stroke treatment rates were collected Flint wide for two different time periods: a preintervention period from July 2010 to September 2017 and a postintervention period from October 2017 to March 2020. The postintervention period was defined based on the initiation of the Stroke Ready intervention in October 2017, corresponding to the start of the emergency department optimization component.
Outcome measure data was not directly related to the intervention, as the intervention was performed among community members and outcomes obtained in people who had a stroke or TIA within time periods before and after the intervention. The workshop data was collected without identifiers at the group level based on perceptions of stroke educators. Baseline data for stroke patients was acquired from the medical record.
Consequently, the information in the Participant Flow and Adverse Events modules only reflects those who attended the community workshops in person or remotely and has no relation to the population addressed in the outcome measures.
Inclusion criteria:Adult stroke patients who presented to one of three hospitals in the Flint community.