Improving post-stroke health outcomes: can facilitated care help?

Health Policy

Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University, 1001 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A 1G5.

Published: December 2009

Objectives: The objectives of this study were (1) identifying the patterns of post-stroke care, (2) determining the care-provider and patient characteristics associated with optimal management of post-stroke care and (3) estimating the potential influence of various facilitated care policies on outcomes.

Methodology: The 3946 subjects included in the study were admitted to one of Quebec's acute-care hospitals with confirmed diagnosis of stroke and subsequently discharged to their home. The records related to fee-for-service billings of this sample were obtained for the 3 months following discharge and used to define the care-provider path for each stroke survivor. These paths were analyzed and the potential impact of various facilitated care interventions was estimated via a Markov model.

Results: The rate of mortality for this sample was 3.2% during the first 3 months after discharge. For the patients who were re-hospitalized, however, the mortality rates were up to 10.3% depending on the care-provider visited prior to re-hospitalization. Our analyses indicate that by avoiding such critical sub-paths via facilitated care, it is possible to achieve improvements in health outcomes as well as cost.

Discussion: There is a window of opportunity for improving community-based post-stroke care. Facilitated care policies concerning planned visits upon discharge from hospital or following ER visits can improve the outcomes.

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Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.healthpol.2009.07.010DOI Listing

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