Quality & Outcomes

Comprehensive Stroke Center Public Reporting

The Brain Attack Coalition defines a Comprehensive Stroke Center (CSC) as a facility or system with the necessary personnel, infrastructure, expertise and programs to diagnose and treat complex stroke patients who require a high intensity of medical and surgical care, specialized tests or interventional therapies.

The types of patients who might benefit from a CSC include patients with:

• Large ischemic stroke
• Hemorrhagic strokes
• Strokes from unusual etiologies
• Strokes requiring specialized testing or therapies
• Strokes requiring multispecialty management

Additional functions of a CSC are to serve as a resource center for area Primary Stroke Centers (PSC) providing expertise and higher lever care and management of patients when treatment is not offered at the PSC. Patients can be transferred through rapid triage and care facilitated for the most appropriate treatment through a collaborative arrangement with Emergency Medical Services (EMS).

Procedures done at a Comprehensive Stroke Center:

• Mechanical thrombectomy for acute stroke
• Thrombolysis for acute stroke
• Cerebral diagnostic angiography
• Endovascular stenting and coiling of aneurysms
• Stenting of occlusive lesions
• Embolization of arteriovenous malformations (AVM) and fistulas (AVF)
• Spinal diagnostic angiography
• Embolization of spinal arteriovenous malformations and fistulas
• Placement of ventriculostomy
• Clipping of aneurysm
• Excision of AVM and AVF
• Removal of intracerebral hematoma
• Decompressive craniotomy

In March of 2018, Community Hospital was certified as Northwest Indiana’s first Comprehensive Stroke Center. Our CSC serves Northwest Indiana by partnering with EMS to ensure that patients get the most appropriate treatment. Using the hub and spoke model, Community Hospital’s CSC accepts transfers from Primary Stroke Centers as well as area hospitals unable to provide acute stroke treatment.

To ensure our Comprehensive Stroke Center provides quality care, we adhere to American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Phase III Target: Stroke Initiative.

The primary goals for Target: Stroke Phase III are:

• Achieve door-to-needle times within 60 minutes in 85 percent or more of acute ischemic stroke patients treated with IV thrombolytics.
• Achieve door-to-device times (arrival to first pass with thrombectomy device) within 90 minutes for direct-arriving patients and within 60 minutes for transfer patients in 50 percent or more of acute ischemic stroke patients treated with endovascular therapy.