Deans' stroke musings: Is Risk-Standardized In-Hospital Stroke Mortality an Adequate Proxy for Risk-Standardized 30-Day Stroke Mortality Data?

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 11, 2017

Is Risk-Standardized In-Hospital Stroke Mortality an Adequate Proxy for Risk-Standardized 30-Day Stroke Mortality Data?

I don't know what is so fucking hard for stroke hospitals to provide 30day stroke deaths. It is totally objective. A great stroke association president would ream out those hospitals that don't provide it and remove any stroke certifications they have. Without this you can't tell which stroke hospitals to avoid.
http://circoutcomes.ahajournals.org/content/10/10/e003748?cpetoc=

Findings From Get With The Guidelines–Stroke

Mathew J. Reeves, Gregg C. Fonarow, Haolin Xu, , , , Lee Schwamm,

https://doi.org/10.1161/CIRCOUTCOMES.117.003748

Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes. 2017;10:e003748

Originally published October 11, 2017

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Abstract

Background—Hospital profiling is typically undertaken using risk-standardized 30-day mortality, but obtaining these data for hospitals can be difficult. We sought to determine whether risk-standardized in-hospital mortality could serve as an adequate proxy for risk-standardized 30-day mortality data for the purposes of identifying outlier hospitals.

Methods and Results—Acute ischemic stroke cases entered into GWTG (Get With The Guidelines)–Stroke between 2003 and 2013 were linked to fee-for-service Medicare files to obtain 30-day mortality. Risk-standardized mortality rates (RSMR) for in-hospital and 30-day mortality were generated using previously developed risk score models, and the proportion of hospitals classified as statistical outliers compared. We also assessed the impact of using the combined outcome of in-hospital mortality or discharge to hospice. A total of 535 332 ischemic stroke patients from 1494 GWTG–Stroke hospitals were included; mean age was 80 years, 59% female, and 19% nonwhite. At the hospital level, mean in-hospital RSMRs and 30-day RSMRs were 6.0% and 14.6%, respectively, but the correlation between the 2 was modest (r=0.53). Overall agreement in the designation of outlier hospitals between in-hospital and 30-day RSMRs was 78%, but chance-corrected agreement was only fair (κ=0.29). However, when using the combined outcome of in-hospital mortality or discharge to hospice (risk-standardized mean =11.8%), the correlation with 30-day RSMR was much stronger (r= 0.83) and outlier agreement improved substantially (κ=0.60).

Conclusions—When used to identify outlier hospitals with high or low mortality, the agreement between risk-standardized in-hospital mortality and 30-day mortality was modest. However, the combined outcome of in-hospital mortality or discharge to hospice showed much better agreement with 30-day mortality. This composite outcome could serve as a proxy for 30-day mortality when used to identify low- or high-performing hospitals.