Barriers to Providing Prehospital Care to Ischemic Stroke Patients: Predictors and Impact on Care
Abstract
IntroductionIschemic stroke treatment is time-sensitive, and barriers to providing prehospital care encountered by Emergency Medical Services (EMS) providers have been under-studied.Hypothesis/ProblemThis study described barriers to providing prehospital care, identified predictors of these barriers, and assessed the impact of these barriers on EMS on-scene time and administration of tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) in the emergency department (ED). A retrospective cohort study was performed using the Get With The Guidelines-Stroke (GWTG-S; American Heart Association [AHA]; Dallas, Texas USA) registry at two hospitals to identify ischemic stroke patients arriving by EMS. Variables were abstracted from prehospital and hospital medical records and merged with registry data. Barriers to care were grouped into themes. Logistic regression was used to identify predictors of barriers to care, and bi-variate tests were used to assess differences in EMS on-scene time and the proportion of patients receiving tPA between patients with and without barriers. Barriers to providing prehospital care were documented for 15.5% of patients: 29.6% related to access, 26.7% communication, 23.0% extrication and transportation, 20.0% refusal, and 14...Continue Reading
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