Stroke improvement plan: equality impact assessment

1. Executive summary

The vision of the Stroke Improvement Plan is to improve stroke care across the whole patient pathway, developing the priorities identified in the Progressive Stroke Pathway (2022) to support the patient centred prevention, diagnosis, treatment and long-term management of stroke.

The incidence of stroke continues to have a significant impact on people in Scotland. The existing Stroke Improvement Plan was published in 2014 and in the last three years, the Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted challenges and opportunities across the entire health care system. The publication of the Progressive Stroke Pathway (PSP) in 2022 set out a vision of what progressive stroke care in Scotland should comprise. The prioritisation and implementation of the PSPs recommendations provides an opportunity for a refreshed Stroke Improvement Plan to reflect this landscape.

The priorities and actions set out in the Stroke Improvement Plan adopt a holistic approach to stroke care across the whole patient pathway, building on work already done through the PSP, Scottish Stroke Improvement Programme reporting and encouraging collaboration and sharing of best practice across service colleagues, stakeholders and our third sector partners.

Our EQIA identified a number of areas where specific efforts to address inequalities throughout the implementation of the plan could be made. These include ensuring that the voices from groups of people are heard, such as those from areas of deprivation, those with intellectual disabilities, those from the LGBT+ community and people with a minority ethnic background who may face inequalities accessing care following stroke and also from the outcomes from stroke, particularly where these groups may overlap each other. The evidence shows that people from these groups face disparities in accessing care and / or in the quality of care following their experience of stroke.

The vision of the Stroke Improvement Plan is to ‘to improve stroke care across the whole patient pathway, developing the priorities identified in the Progressive Stroke Pathway (2022) to support the patient centred prevention, diagnosis, treatment and long-term management of stroke’. Because of this, we do not envision that the plan will have a negative impact on any individual or group, however, it is vital that in the implementation of the actions within the plan, we continue to engage in a robust lived experience process that allows the voices of those listed above to be heard.