Timely and Effective Care – Stroke

Methodology

Data are obtained from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Hospital Compare databases. Hospital Compare has information about the quality of care at over 4,000 Medicare-certified hospitals, including over 130 Veterans Administration (VA) medical centers, across the country. Hospital Compare includes measures of timely and effective care (also known as “process of care” measures) including:

• The percentage of hospital patients who got treatments known to get the best results for certain common, serious medical conditions or surgical procedures
• How quickly hospitals treat patients who come to the hospital with certain medical emergencies, and
• How well hospitals provide preventive services

Limitations of Geographic Summaries
Data from Hospital Compare are summarized to geographic areas based on the location of the hospital. Scores for counties, states, and report areas do not necessarily reflect the conditions of patients residing in the underlying areas. Hospitals may serve a large area extending beyond the borders of a county, particularly when they are located near the border of two or more geographic units.

Data Inclusion Rules
Measures of timely and effective care apply to any adult patients treated at participating hospitals for whom the recommended treatments would be appropriate, including Medicare patients, Medicare managed care patients, and non-Medicare patients. Hospitals with a large number of discharges may provide data from a sample of eligible Medicare and non-Medicare patients, based on CMS sampling rules. For VHA hospitals, the measures apply to eligible adult patients treated at VHA hospitals in accordance with The Joint Commission guidelines. For more detail about the timely and effective care measures, please refer to QualityNet.