Bridging the quality gap

Stroke is the third biggest killer in the UK yet our stroke care lags behind other developed nations. The Health Foundation’s report Bridging the quality gap is a thorough exploration of the quality of our stroke care. Despite the national priority accorded to stroke, services in the UK are not as high quality as they should be.

Key points from the report

• Bridging the quality gap creates a new lens through which we can view stroke care. For the first time, the report brings together data on the performance of stroke services, the evidence of what works and the cost implications. It is a blueprint for immediate action.
• It summarises quality of care using six key domains of care – effectiveness, access, capacity, safety, patient centredness and equity.
• The report provides data on quality of care in stroke and illustrates the gap between actual and achievable performance. It provides international benchmarking data to highlight deficiencies in stroke services and variation in care across the country.
• It reviews available evidence about how to bridge the quality gap in stroke care. Drawing on systematic reviews of the literature, it illustrates the current state of knowledge about ‘what works’ to improve organisational performance and presents emergent research data on the impact of stroke interventions on the avoidable burden of disease.
• The report summarises those improvements that would generate the highest value outcomes for patients. It offers a framework through which we can catalyse change by engaging all staff, leaders, managers and clinicians.
• The report presents epidemiological data and summarises recent policy documents on stroke, providing the context against which quality can be judged.

Download Bridging the quality gap.pdf (694 kb)

Commentary

In the commentary on the report Dr Maxine Power draws on international experience in improving stroke care and highlights the critical need for concerted effort and action in England.

Maxine is a former Health Foundation Quality Improvement Fellow. She spent a year in the USA working with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. There, she worked up a project brief to identify a core number of processes that if performed reliably will improve outcomes for patients after stroke.

Maxine is now working with The Health Foundation, using the learning she gained to set up a two-year stroke improvement collaborative in hospitals in the North West strategic health authority area.

Download Rising to the challenge of accelerating improvment in stroke care.pdf (202 kb)