Centralising acute stroke care within clinical practice in the Netherlands: lower bounds of the causal impact

BACKGROUND Authors in previous studies demonstrated that centralising acute stroke care is associated with an increased chance of timely Intra-Venous Thrombolysis (IVT) and lower costs compared to care at community hospitals. In this study we estimated the lower bound of the causal impact of centralising IVT on health and cost outcomes within clinical practice in the Northern Netherlands. METHODS We used observational data from 267 and 780 patients in a centralised and decentralised system, respectively. The original dataset was linked to the hospital information systems. Literature on healthc... Mehr ...