Quality Improvement

QuICR will be leading quality improvement and knowledge translation projects across Alberta with a focus on access to care and speed of treatments.  Our current focus are on these three areas:

1. In ischemic stroke patients, opening the blocked artery as fast as possible saves brain. We aim to improve the time from when a stroke patient arrives in the hospital to when they receive clot-busting drug, IV tPA.  This is called the door-to-needle (DTN) time.  We aim to lower the DTN to a median of 30 minutes across Alberta.
2. For patients that have a Transient Ischemic Attack (TIA), we know that evaluating these patients quickly can prevent a stroke.  We aim to ensure that 80% of all TIA patients in Alberta receive same-day evaluation.
3. Improve access to endovascular therapy for all Albertans.

The Door-to-Needle initiative was launched in September 2015.  QuICR has started on improving the  Door-to-Needle  (DTN) times across Alberta.  We have an aggressive target to reduce the median DTN time to 30 minutes, and to have 80% of all patients treated within 60 minutes.

*This work is being done in collaboration with AHS's Cardiovascular Health & Stroke - Strategic Clinical Network

QuICR understands the need to authentically have a patient active in research planning, research projects and knowledge translation. In order to do this, we are partnering with Patient and Community Engagement Researchers (PaCER) group.