King's awarded contract to deliver world-leading stroke programme

The School of Population Health & Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine has been awarded a new contract to deliver the world-leading Sentinel Stroke National Audit Programme from April 2018.

The Sentinel Stroke National Audit Programme (SSNAP) was established in 2012 and is the first national stroke register in the world. It is the most comprehensive and reliable source of information about the performance of stroke services in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and aims to improve stroke care by measuring the quality of stroke services against evidence-based standards and supporting staff to make improvements. SSNAP is commissioned by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP) and funded by NHS England and the Welsh Government as part of the National Clinical Audit and Patient Outcomes Programme (NCAPOP).

The programme was previously based at the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) and was the successor to the National Sentinel Stroke Audit which began there in 1998. The audit was part of a wider Stroke Programme based at the RCP including the production of the National Clinical Guidelines for Stroke, and research papers on subjects ranging from pneumonia risk after stroke and how stroke care varies according to the day of the week and time of day. 

Over the past 20 years since the start of the programme, care for stroke patients has improved hugely, as the regular and open publication of audit results spurred hospitals to invest in stroke care and match the performance of the best.  Now, in 2018, patients with stroke can expect to receive high quality care on a stroke unit with dedicated staff, and survival rates following stroke have increased, a testament to the success of the Stroke Programme.

From its early beginnings when it mainly collected information about inpatient treatment and care, its scope has broadened to the entire patient journey, from being admitted to hospital to the six-month follow-up appointment. The results are updated every three months and cover all hospitals treating stroke patients in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The move to King’s will offer significant benefits to the programme and the SSNAP team, working alongside a world-leading, multidisciplinary group of epidemiologists, stroke physicians, GPs, social scientists, statisticians and health economists. The team will continue working on ensuring that the data collected is used for local, regional and national quality improvement (QI) projects and initiatives to ensure that the audit is visible, utilised and a facilitator for QI in stroke care.

Professor Charles Wolfe, Head of School of Population Health & Environmental Sciences, says of the move:

'The new partnership with our long-term collaborators in SSNAP means closer working to maximise the impact of the national audit in improving care. I hope we at King’s can help develop innovative research to improve quality improvement for people with stroke.'

Professor Tony Rudd, Chair of the Intercollegiate Stroke Working Party, Professor of Stroke Medicine and Stroke Physician at St Thomas’ Hospital said:

'We are delighted to be working with the team at King’s to deliver the SSNAP audit while at the same time maintaining important links with the Royal College of Physicians. The move offers the opportunity to use the huge dataset to its maximum potential to improve the care of stroke patients through the collaboration with a world class academic unit.'