A competitive clinical environment improves procedural times in endovascular stroke treatment

Despite numerous optimization attempts, time delays are still a relevant problem in endovascular stroke treatment. We hypothesized that public display of the fastest procedural times in our institution would raise awareness, which would result in improved procedural times.

We established a competition, which lasted 6 months, in which the fastest neurovascular team in terms of procedural times (image to reperfusion) was displayed on a public board in our institution and rewarded with public praise. During this time no other relevant procedural or infrastructural means for improvement of procedural times were introduced in our institution. We prospectively evaluated procedural times in 496 patients who received endovascular stroke treatment 9 months before the competition, during the competition, and during the four 6-month time periods for 2 years after the competition.

Median image-to-reperfusion times improved significantly from 98 min before the competition to 85 min during the competition (p=0.005) and remained stable with a median of 81 min 2 years after the competition (p=0.837).

We were able to improve our procedural times significantly with a simple and cost-efficient competition. This effect was sustained 2 years after the competition was completed, implying that the improvement in procedural times was probably due to raised awareness.