Assessing improvements in survival for stroke patients in the Northern Territory 1992?2013: a marginal structural analysis.

Conclusions Stroke survival has improved in the NT over the past two decades. The marginal structural models provide a powerful methodological tool that can be applied to hospital administrative data to assess changes in quality of care and the impact of interventions. What is known about the topic? Stroke-related mortality has fallen in the past 30 years in Australia. Indigenous Australians have much worse health outcomes than other Australians, including higher stroke incidence and mortality, but it is not known whether stroke survival has improved for Indigenous stroke patients. What does this paper add? This study measured long-term survival for Indigenous and non-Indigenous patients after hospital admissions for stroke care, using hospital admission data analysed by marginal structural models. The present study demonstrates the usefulness of this approach to the quality assessment of health care interventions. What are the implications for practitioners? Hospital administrative data can, and should, be routinely used for monitoring long-term outcomes of acute care. Although survival has improved for Indigenous stroke patients over the past two decades, their survival remains lower than that of non-Indigenous patients. Coordinated acute and primary care plays a vital role in management of chronic diseases to improve stroke survival. PMID: 25701881 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Australian Health Review - Category: Hospital Management Authors: Tags: Aust Health Rev Source Type: research