Abstract W P312: Pre-Hospital and Hospital Data Linkage in an Organized Stroke System of Care: A Pilot Study

Objective: Quality improvement within organized stroke systems of care, where policies such as diversion to primary stroke centers (PSC) integrate pre-hospital strategies with hospital performance and patient outcomes, are dependent on accurate linkage of emergency medical services (EMS) and hospital patient data. Currently, such linkage is difficult due to patient privacy concerns, heterogeneous and discrete databases, and variability in data collection. The objective of this pilot project was to create and validate a linkage algorithm for EMS and hospital data from 2 primary stroke centers (PSC) in Chicago. Methods: A retrospective analysis of the Get With The Guidelines (GWTG) Stroke registry identified confirmed stroke patients treated at 2 regional PSCs during the first 2 months of 2013. Data from the EMS SafetyPAD database on all patients arriving to those 2 PSCs during the same period were also retrieved. These datasets were provided in CSV format without patient identifiers and inserted it into th...