Improving Stroke Care in Greece in Terms of Management, Costs and Health Outcomes-
Improving Stroke Care in Greece in Terms of Management, Costs and Health Outcomes-
The main objectives of the proposed project are:

 1. To provide essential data on acute stroke management (quality indicators) incorporating
 hard clinical outcomes that will contribute to an ongoing process of quality improvement

 2. To develop an interactive multichannel platform, for collecting, cleansing and curating
 high quality in-hospital and follow up data, applying multidimensional quality
 assessment analysis, providing statistical and analytic reports, monitoring behavioral
 changes and supporting overall project's management.

 3. To evaluate patients' and physicians' experiences and their impact on stroke management.

 4. To assess severe negative impact of stroke on the life of survivors including quality of
 life and disability

 5. To measure health related and non- health (loss of productivity, informal care) related
 national expenditure for stroke care using a bottom up approach

 6. To evaluate the value of care focusing on health outcomes compared with total costs of
 achieving them
A prospective cohort multicenter study of patients with first ever acute stroke, hemorrhagic
 and ischemic, (ICD-10 codes: I61, I63 and I64) admitted within 48 hours of symptoms onset to
 seven NHS and University hospitals will be conducted. About 1,000 patients (2% of all new
 cases/annually) will be recruited from six urban and semi-urban areas with 5.5 mil people
 (50% of Greek population), reporting 25,000 discharged stroke cases annually (53% of all
 stroke discharges), according to data derived from Hellenic Statistical Authority. All
 patients will be followed for three months. Moreover, a sub-group of the 300 firstly
 recruited patients will be followed for a year to obtain data on post hospital health and
 social needs, health services utilization (medication, rehabilitation, outpatient visits) and
 productivity loss . Patient enrolment and follow up is estimated to last 18 months.
Inclusion Criteria:

 -  Diagnosis of hemorrhagic or ischemic stroke (ICD-10: I61, I63 and I64)

 -  Patients with First ever acute stroke