Establishing high quality, integrated data for chronic disease management plans and secondary prevention medications and their effectiveness for patients after stroke: a substudy of STANDFIRM

Stroke is a costly and burdensome chronic disease in Australia. The objective of this doctoral project was to evaluate how Medicare-subsidised Chronic Disease Management plans may improve outcomes for patients after stroke. Patients with stroke from a clinical trial had their data linked with administrative databases and analysed. Participants who were on these plans for longer had reduced cardiovascular disease-related readmissions and were more likely to be adherent to their secondary prevention medications. The utility of data linkage for capturing outcomes after stroke is also explored. Common estimations of medication dosage, derived from administrative data, were also compared.