Introduction: High quality data is critical to drive and maintain acute stroke care in line with national guidelines and targets. However, the process of data collection and recording is often complex, slow and highly time consuming in an environment with limited resources.
Methods: Three key tasks were undertaken to improve data collection and recording for acute stroke care at Austin Health. Introduction of clinical notes templates. Clear definition of the data collection process including, specifying who collects which data points and ensuring multiple people are not collecting the same information. And finally, extensive use of Electronic Medical Record (EMR) data exports and automation to generate monthly key metrics and extracts for upload to the Australian Clinical Stroke Register (AuSCR).
Results: All three areas resulted in improvements to collection and recording of acute stroke care data. Introduction of templates has not only streamlined processes for practitioners providing stroke care but ensured key data points can be quickly and easily identified. By reviewing the list of collected datapoints and defining when each item would be collected and by whom, occurrences of duplicate collection were eliminated. Finally, the use of EMR exports and Microsoft Excel has reduced the number of datapoints required for collection along with processing time required for monthly statistic presentations.
Conclusion: Process improvements can result in increased efficiency of data collection and recording especially with regards to reducing occurrence of duplicate data collection and processing time through automation. However, there is still extensive scope for improvement in this space where back-end changes can be made to the EMR and custom export reports developed.
Relevance to clinical practice or patient experience: Improvements to data collection and recording can allow staff to focus on patient care and quality improvement rather than data collection.