The Sentinel Stroke National Audit Programme (SSNAP) is the most comprehensive and reliable source of information about the performance of stroke services in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. SSNAP aims to improve stroke care by measuring the quality of stroke services against evidence based standards and supporting staff to make improvements.
Transparency and open data is a government initiative that aims to publish information about clinical services and outcomes and so enable patients, staff, academics and others to make informed decisions about healthcare services. SSNAP is leading the way in supporting the data transparency agenda its latest report, published today, will be central to supporting future improvements in stroke care in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Data can transform how care is delivered and organised and should not be feared by healthcare teams or decision makers. Without high quality data, improvement in clinical care is unlikely to occur. SSNAP data are reported in various formats to meet the interests and requirements of a range of audiences for example, interactive maps, patient and carer focused reports (Easy access versions), slideshows as well as the formal reports. This SSNAP report provides a level of detail and insight into the stroke care pathway, from both the team and patient perspective, which has not been available previously on such a national scale.
SSNAP measures the entire patient care pathway, from admission to hospital through to 6 months post-stroke; hospitals are compared against evidence based standards and the national average. There were 63,005 records included in SSNAP (from January – October 2013) and 100% of teams in hospitals who directly admit stroke patients in England are registered to take part in the audit.
Huge improvements have been made in the quality of stroke care and services over the past years as measured by previous national stroke audits and it is anticipated that similar improvements will be demonstrated through future SSNAP quarterly reports. No hospital in England or Wales has achieved the top overall performance level this quarter. This is because extremely high standards have been set with the aim of stimulating hospitals to identify where improvements are needed and drive change. Nowhere else in the world has set as stringent standards and the results should be read in this context.
Professor Tony Rudd CBE, Chair of the Intercollegiate stroke working party, said,
It is a fantastic achievement by all those hospital teams who contributed data to this report – over 17,000 records were available for analysis in the period from June to September 2013. We estimate that 80,000 patients are admitted to hospital each year in England, and so, already, with SSNAP we are achieving very high levels of case ascertainment.
The next stages of SSNAP are also very ambitious, we will, in due course, be able to report on the care of all stroke patients admitted to hospital and define the care they received. We will also be able to report on outcomes such as mortality and disability.
The effort of all the participating hospital teams is acknowledged and this high level of participation and high quality data will enable a much stronger case to be made for improvements in stroke care and to ensure that patients and clinicians are getting the best out of the services.”
This report presents information about care received by stroke patients who were admitted to hospital between July – September 2013. It reports hospital team performance (‘team centred’ results), as well as the care received by patients at each point until discharge (‘patient centred’ results). SSNAP provides regular, routine reliable data about stroke services in England and Wales. This can support clinicians and NHS Trust management to identify where improvements are needed and empower patients to ask questions about their care.
SSNAP is guided by the Intercollegiate stroke working party (ICSWP) and delivered by the Stroke Programme in the RCP. It is commissioned by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP) until March 2015. SSNAP builds on the work of the National Sentinel Stroke Audit (NSSA) and the Stroke Improvement National Audit Programme (SINAP). SSNAP is the chosen method for collection of data about stroke care in the NHS Outcomes Framework and the CCG Outcomes Indicator Set.
For further information, please contact Hannah Bristow, Clinical Standards communications officer, on 020 3075 1447 / 07584 303 784 or email Hannah.Bristow@rcplondon.ac.uk
- *hospitals that routinely admit patients within 7 days of stroke were also eligible to participate.
- The report is available to download on the RCP website
- This audit is part of National Clinical Audit and Patient Outcomes Programme (NCAPOP). It is commissioned by HQIP and delivered by the RCPs Stroke Programme within the Clinical Effectiveness and Evaluation Unit. Data were collected within trusts using a standardised method.
- The Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP) is led by a consortium of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, the Royal College of Nursing and National Voices. Its aim is to promote quality improvement, and in particular to increase the impact that clinical audit has on healthcare quality in England and Wales. HQIP hosts the contract to manage and develop the National Clinical Audit and Patient Outcomes Programme (NCAPOP). NCAPOP is funded by NHS England, Welsh Government and with some individual audits also funded by the Health Department of the Scottish Government, DHSSPS Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands.