Primary Stroke Center Hospitalization for Elderly Patients With Stroke: Implications for Case Fatality and Travel Times.

ABSTRACT:

Importance

Physicians often must decide whether to treat patients with acute stroke locally or refer them to a more distant Primary Stroke Center (PSC). There is little evidence on how much the increased risk of prolonged travel time offsets benefits of a specialized PSC care.

Objectives

To examine the association of case fatality with receiving care in PSCs vs other hospitals for patients with stroke and to identify whether prolonged travel time offsets the effect of PSCs.

Design, setting, and participants

Retrospective cohort study of Medicare beneficiaries with stroke admitted to a hospital between January 1, 2010, and December 31, 2013. Drive times were calculated based on zip code centroids and street-level road network data. We used an instrumental variable anal

SUBMITTER: Bekelis K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5434865 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature