Stroke care networks and the impact on quality of care

Jan Schoenfelder (), Mansour Zarrin, Remo Griesbaum and Ansgar Berlis
Additional contact information
Jan Schoenfelder: University of Augsburg
Mansour Zarrin: University of Augsburg
Remo Griesbaum: University of Augsburg
Ansgar Berlis: University Hospital Augsburg

Health Care Management Science, 2022, vol. 25, issue 1, No 2, 24-41

Abstract: Abstract Lack of rapidly available neurological expertise, especially in rural areas, is one of the key obstacles in stroke care. Stroke care networks attempt to address this challenge by connecting hospitals with specialized stroke centers, stroke units, and hospitals of lower levels of care. While the benefits of stroke care networks are well-documented, travel distances are likely to increase when patients are transferred almost exclusively between members of the same network. This is particularly important for patients who require mechanical thrombectomy, an increasingly employed treatment method that requires equipment and expertise available in specialized stroke centers. This study aims to analyze the performance of the current design of stroke care networks in Bavaria, Germany, and to evaluate the improvement potential when the networks are redesigned to minimize travel distances. To this end, we define three fundamental criteria for assessing network design performance: 1) average travel distances, 2) the populace in the catchment area relative to the number of stroke units, and 3) the ratio of stroke units to lower-care hospitals. We generate several alternative stroke network designs using an analytical approach based on mathematical programming and clustering. Finally, we evaluate the performance of the existing networks in Bavaria via simulation. The results show that the current network design could be significantly improved concerning the average travel distances. Moreover, the existing networks are unnecessarily imbalanced when it comes to their number of stroke units per capita and the ratio of stroke units to lower-care hospitals.

Keywords: Stroke care; Simulation modeling; Clustering; Network design; Operations research; Operations management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10729-021-09582-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:hcarem:v:25:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1007_s10729-021-09582-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/10729

DOI: 10.1007/s10729-021-09582-0

Access Statistics for this article

Health Care Management Science is currently edited by Yasar Ozcan

More articles in Health Care Management Science from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().