Deans' stroke musings: Almost three quarters of hospitals don't have adequate rehab facilities for stroke patients

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Almost three quarters of hospitals don't have adequate rehab facilities for stroke patients

It is even much worse than that. They don't measure any results so they can't even tell you how badly the existing stroke rehab services are getting survivors to recovery.
http://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/three-quarters-hospitals-dont-adequate-9126521
Almost three quarters of hospitals don't have adequate rehab facilities for stroke patients.
An audit led by the HSE and the Irish Heart Foundation found that 73% of facilities can't provide the correct services.
Furthermore the audit found there are major shortages in nursing, medical and therapy staff numbers.
Due to an ageing population, stroke is rising by 350 cases a year.

The audit which was carried out on 26 out of 29 facilities found deficiencies in vital recovery services for stroke patients.
Almost two thirds of those facilities surveyed, 60%, did not have a stroke specialist.
77% of hospitals had no dedicated stroke unit compared to just a quarter in the UK while 61% had no access to a Community Rehabilitation team.
The audit team recommended investment to provide more beds, more staff and community teams to deal with the problems highlighted in the report.
HSE's Professor Joe Harbison said there is a need for around 250 extra therapists to tackle the problems.
Professor Harbison said: “The incidence of stroke in Ireland is rising by about 350 extra cases every year, but we still have a severe shortage of stroke unit beds to accommodate patients, or the specialist nursing, therapy and medical staff we need to care for them,” said the HSE’s National Clinical Lead for Stroke, Professor Joe Harbison.
“We have only about half the acute stroke unit beds we need to meet international standards, and this audit shows an even lower proportion of specialist rehabilitation beds."
Dr Paul McElwaine, Stroke Research Fellow, National Clinical Programme for Stroke added:“It makes no sense at all that we have significant investment of expertise and resources to save patients’ lives after a stroke, but then fail to follow through with basic therapy services that will help them recover.
“Ireland is at the cutting edge of developing lifesaving treatments such as thrombectomy and thrombolysis to treat stroke.
"But we waste much of the benefit of these innovations by failing to provide the therapy that doesn’t just promote recovery and a better quality of life for patients, but also reduces overall health service costs by keeping patients out of nursing homes.”