Scottish Stroke Care Audit 2015

Andrea Cail, Director Scotland of the Stroke Association said:‘These standards are tough and they are meant to challenge stroke teams to ensure continuous improvements in treatment and care.

However, we are concerned to see that a number of hospitals in Scotland are still failing to meet the standard set for some of the vital elements of care as outlined in the stroke care bundle¹

The report demonstrates an improvement in delivering the overall stroke bundle in the Boards in Scotland in the past year, but not enough individual hospitals are achieving the targets set for the individual components, and many hospitals don’t appear to have shifted their performance in a significant way

We are pleased to see that 19 out of 30 hospitals have achieved the brain scan standard – 90% of patients received a scan within 24 hours of admission which suggests that there is better access to a scanner and radiology staff during out of hours. The number of people having a scan within 4 hours of arriving at hospital has increased but we want to see this percentage continue to rise. This is an imperative part of securing a diagnosis to commence the appropriate treatment including thrombolysis where this is indicated.

Stroke remains a key health issue for the people of Scotland and the Scottish NHS. It is the third commonest cause of death in Scotland and the most common cause of severe physical disability amongst Scottish adults and we have to continuously seek to improve how we manage this condition.

The pressure that hospitals are facing isn’t likely to go away. Despite the reduction in the number of strokes in Scotland over the last 10 years, type 2 diabetes and obesity are on the increase and we have ageing population, all of these are risk factors for stroke.

1. The Stroke Care Bundle measures four components of stroke care that every patient admitted to hospital should expect to receive, regardless of where they live in Scotland. The stroke care standards include timely stroke unit admission, swallow screen, brain scan and aspirin.