What are health system approaches to secondary stroke prevention?
Health system approaches to secondary stroke prevention hold promise for improving risk factor control after stroke. Risk factor control is affected by patient, provider, and system-level factors. We define health systems-based interventions for secondary stroke prevention as those that influence vascular risk factor treatment and control by influencing provider or patient behaviors, such as voluntary hospital-based or outpatient-focused quality monitoring and improvement programs, a multidisciplinary outpatient team-based approach, and a decision support tool that improves diagnostic accuracy and stratifies patients in risk categories.