Feb 15, 2023
A recent research paper highlighting quality improvement, measurement and clinical expertise provides an exemplar approach towards improving outcomes for stroke patients in Saskatchewan.
The implementation of Saskatchewan’s Provincial Stroke Strategy led to an improvement in stroke care across the province, including a decrease in door-to-imaging time—a crucial window when working with suspected stroke patients. This improvement was featured in a recent journal article published in the BMJ Open Quality on July 27, 2021.
Patrick Falastein, a program director with the Saskatchewan Health Quality Council (HQC), explained how the organization has been involved with the Provincial Stroke Strategy for a decade. Of the ten listed authors, three were from HQC (Vivian N. Onaemo, Jessica Hamilton and Laura Schwartz) and had worked on the stroke pathway project.
“HQC has been supporting this since the early days. At the beginning, we offered very boots-on-the-ground supports, such as value stream mapping and process mapping, as well as measurement aggregation and reporting,” Falastein said. “Now we are focusing on the data side and expanding this from acute stroke pathways to include secondary prevention and education. HQC brought together measurement and quality improvement expertise with clinical expertise to produce world-class results.”
Falastein added since this pathway has been implemented, stroke care in the province has been recognized as a leading practice by Healthcare Excellence Canada.
“It’s an example of how quality improvement can be implemented in clinical settings to produce better outcomes for patients and this journal article showcases some of that great work,” he said.
Future work with the Provincial Stroke Strategy includes enhanced partner engagement and patient outcome measures.
A link to this journal article can be found in HQC’s Resource Library.
