Improving Quality of Care

An important part of our mission is improving the quality of stroke care in northeastern Ohio and beyond. SORP researchers have been heavily involved in initiating and developing regional quality improvement initiatives and working towards improved systems of care.

Ohio Paul Coverdell Acute Stroke Registry
Ohio was one of only 4 states recently awarded with a 5-year grant from the Centers of Disease Control to improve the quality of acute stroke care throughout the state. The Stroke Outcomes Research Program is the main coordinating center for this grant, which is funded through the Ohio Department of Health. This is the second time researchers and quality improvement personnel from Ohio have been awarded Coverdell funding for stroke care - Ohio was one of the 4 states initially awarded funding back in 2001. This ambitious quality improvement project will focus on prehospital and hospital-based care.

Get-With-The-Guidelines – StrokeSM
In 2003, American Heart Association implemented the Get-With-The-Guidelines – Stroke Patient Management Tool. This tool combined several of the features of both Cuyahoga County Operation Stroke registry and the Ohio Coverdell Registry, with added features allowing immediate comparative reporting and built-in quality improvement tools. Cuyahoga County hospitals changed their data collection tool to GWTG-Stroke. We strongly support the use of American Heart Association’s Get-With-The-Guidelines Stroke Patient Management Tool, a hospital-based data collection and quality improvement instrument. (Go to Site Here) We work with the dedicated personnel of the American Heart Association on this important initiative.

Cuyahoga County Operation Stroke
Active from 2000-2004, this American Stroke Association initiative implemented a county-wide data collection process related to hyperacute management of patients with stroke (Stroke 2003;). The dataform and reporting infrastructure was developed by healthcare personnel involved in Operation Stroke. All hospitals worked together with this initiative to measure and subsequently optimize stroke care. They continue to collect data on stroke patients to monitor and improve stroke management.