title: National stroke registries for monitoring and improving the quality of hospital care: A systematic review.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Routine monitoring of the quality of stroke care is becoming increasingly important since patient outcomes could be improved with better access to proven treatments. It remains unclear how many countries have established a national registry for monitoring stroke care.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To describe the current status of national, hospital-based stroke registries that have a focus on monitoring access to evidence-based care and patient outcomes and to summarize the main features of these registries.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We undertook a systematic search of the published literature to identify the registries that are considered in their country to represent a national standardized dataset for acute stroke care and outcomes. Our initial keyword search yielded 5002 potential papers, of which we included 316 publications representing 28 national stroke registries from 26 countries. Where reported, data were most commonly collected with a waiver of patient consent (70%). Most registries used web-based systems for data collection (57%) and 25% used data linkage. Few variables were measured consistently among the registries reflecting their different local priorities. Funding, resource requirements, and coverage also varied.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This review provides an overview of the current use of national stroke registries, a description of their common features relevant to monitoring stroke care in hospitals. Formal registration and description of registries would facilitate better awareness of efforts in this field.
authors.affiliation: Stroke and Ageing Research, School of Clinical Sciences at Monash Health, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia dominique.cadilhac@monash.edu.
authors.forename: Dominique A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Cadilhac
authors.affiliation: Stroke and Ageing Research, School of Clinical Sciences at Monash Health, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia.
authors.forename: Joosup
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: College of Science, Health and Engineering, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria, Australia Alfred Health, Prahran, Australia.
authors.forename: Natasha A
authors.initials: NA
authors.lastname: Lannin
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.
authors.forename: Moira K
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: Kapral
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Stroke Service Division, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Lee H
authors.initials: LH
authors.lastname: Schwamm
authors.affiliation: Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
authors.forename: Martin S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Dennis
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Sciences, Neurology, Lund University, Sweden.
authors.forename: Bo
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Norrving
authors.affiliation: Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia Department of Medicine, Royal Melbourne Hospital, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia Department of Neurology, Helsinki University Central Hospital, Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: Atte
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Meretoja
mesh_terms: D006761:Hospitals; D006801:Humans; D038622:Internationality; D011787:Quality of Health Care / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D012042:Registries; D020521:Stroke / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000628:therapy*
keywords: Stroke; health care; outcome assessment; quality assurance; registries