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The Eastern Health Box Hill Stroke Unit is celebrating consecutive international awards for meeting the highest standards in stroke treatment and care.

The World Stroke Organization (WSO) Angels Platinum Award follows the hospital attaining WSO Gold Status – making Eastern Health Box Hill the sixth hospital in Australia to receive the coveted Platinum ranking.Eastern Health Stroke Neurologist, Philip Choi said achieving WSO Angels Platinum Status was an honour for the entire team.

“We were thrilled to achieve WSO Gold Status and are even prouder to see the hospital improve upon that benchmark,” Dr Choi said.

“These awards recognise our combined efforts and commitment to improve stroke care in the community.”

The performance of the hospital’s stroke unit was assessed as part of the Angels Initiative’s awards. The awards are given according to a set of stroke care key performance indicators achieved by the hospital. For WSO Platinum status, this includes a target of restoring blood-flow to the brain to more than 75 per cent of eligible patients within 60 minutes of their hospital arrival.

This year alone, Eastern Health Box Hill has treated 760 stroke patients.

 
The Eastern Health Box Hill Stroke Team Image: Eastern Health

Eastern Health Acute Stroke Nurse, Tanya Frost highlighted the performance of the team at the Box Hill Campus.

“Our greatest strength is our front end; our door to needle time, which is the time that the patient presents until the time they get thrombolysis and our door in, door out time. We're national leaders in both those times.

“We're very proud to say that we're the fastest in the country and are able to set that standard to ensure that patients receive excellent, prompt expert care to aid the best possible recovery post stroke,” Ms Frost said.

To achieve WSO Platinum status, a hospital must demonstrate a range of outcomes, including optimum time to treatment, coordinated care, appropriate scans and screening, and ensuring patients are discharged from hospital on medications to minimise the risk of further stroke.

“The stroke nurses are there for the entire patient journey, from when the patient comes through the door, to when the patient goes home and the coordination of the systems approach in between.

“We know that what we do today makes a massive difference to the patient and how they recover from their stroke,” Ms Frost explained.

The Angels Initiative Medical Project Manager in Australia, Kim Malkin, said every step toward improving care and outcomes for stroke patients was worth celebrating, as there were approximately 38,000 stroke events across Australia each year – around 100 every day.

“To date, only a handful of Australian hospitals have achieved WSO Angels Platinum status, so Eastern Health Box Hill should be immensely proud of this achievement.”

The Angels initiative, a partnership between the World Stroke Organization, European Stroke Organisation and Boehringer Ingelheim, aims to optimise the standard of treatment in stroke centres worldwide and improve patient outcomes by setting global benchmarks for best practice stroke care.