The Scottish Stroke Care Audit is a national audit within the Scottish Healthcare Audits of the National Intelligence & Information Department (NI&I) at the Information Services Division (ISD) of NHS National Services Scotland (NSS). The audit has its own Steering Committee reporting directly to the National Advisory Committee for Stroke (NACS) at the Scottish Government and providing strategic direction and clinical input to the audit team, optimising the use of the data.
Since 2002 Lothian’s three acute hospitals — the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh (RIE), St John’s Hospital (SJH) and Western General Hospital (WGH) — have each collected data on quality of care of all patients admitted with stroke or referred to stroke clinics at SJH/ WGH.
SSCA publish annual national reports on stroke services and these can be found on their website: http://www.strokeaudit.scot.nhs.uk/index.html
Scottish Stroke Care Standards (2016)
A review of the NHS QIS standards for stroke care took place in 2012 and they were further updated in 2016. This review was undertaken by the SSCA Steering Committee in collaboration with Stroke MCNs and Healthcare Improvement Scotland. The revised standards were endorsed by the National Advisory Committee for Stroke at the Scottish Government.
| Topic | Scottish Stroke Care Standards, April 2016 |
|---|---|
| Access to Stroke Unit | 90% within 1 day of admission (day 1) |
| Brain imaging | 90% within 12 hours of admission (updated 1 Jan 2019) |
| Swallow screen | 100% within 4 hours of admission |
| Aspirin administration | 95% of ischaemic strokes within 1 day of admission (day 1) |
| Specialist neurovascular clinic | 80% are examined within 4 days of receipt of referral |
| Thrombolysis | 50% receive the bolus within 30 minutes of arrival at hospital, and 80% within one hour |
| Carotid Intervention | 80% undergoing carotid endarterectomy for symptomatic carotid stenosis have the operation within 14 days of the most recent stroke event |
