Dive Brief:
- Hospitals often have an unrealistic perception of the time is takes them to administer tPA for stroke care, according to a study published this week in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
- The study compared input from staff at 141 hospitals across the U.S. to recorded patient data, revealing significant differences between what the staff had perceived and the reality of care provided.
- Just 29% of the surveyed staff accurately estimated the time it took at their facility for stroke patients to receive tPA.
Dive Insight:
The study concludes that a top factor in whether hospitals accurately estimate their stroke care is the number of stroke patients they treat, while the hospital's size or location were not indicated as significant factors.
The study ranked hospitals as high, middle or low-performing by what percentage of their stroke patients received tPA in the recommended amount of time. It found that 85% of the low-performing hospitals and 42% of the middle-performing hospitals overestimated their performance. Of the low-performing hospitals, almost one in five incorrectly believed that their performance was actually faster than the national average.
"Institutions at any performance level could benefit from making protocol changes that would better align performance with perception," study lead author Dr. Cheryl Lin, a former researcher at Duke Clinical Research Institute in Durham, N.C., said in a prepared statement.