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Reduction of Length of Stay and Costs Through the Implementation of Clinical Pathways for Stroke Management in China

The aim of the clinical pathway is to establish a standardized healthcare plan for a specific disease in a specific patient cohort.1,2 To date, clinical pathways have been implemented for a great variety of diseases to improve the treatment effectiveness and to reduce the cost.3–9 Various clinical pathways on stroke management have been explored to enhance the interdisciplinary coordination, reduce the length of hospital stay, and facilitate the patients’ rehabilitation.6,8–10

Approximately 1.6 million patients died of stroke every year in China, which hugely strains the financial means of patients and the government.11 Therefore, the National Health and Family Planning Commission of China (formerly the Ministry of Health) commissioned a panel of physician experts to produce a draft of stroke clinical pathway and tested in a limited scale for 1 year. After the revision based on the feedbacks, the stroke clinical pathway entered a nationwide evaluation period from 2009 to 2013. Individual healthcare institutions were allowed to fine tune recommended protocols if necessary. The aim of this stroke clinical pathway study was to find a strategy to reduce the cost for healthcare without jeopardizing the quality of treatments by streamlining the stroke management. In this study, we …