A recently conducted study has revealed that several hospitals in the United States overestimate their ability to provide fast delivery of tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) to stroke patients. The findings of the study were published online July 22 in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

The team of researchers for the study surveyed staff of nearly 141 hospitals across the country. These hospitals were those who treated nearly 48,201 stroke patients in 2009 and 2010.

It has been said that hospitals surveyed in the study participated in the American Heart Association's 'Get with the Guidelines: Stroke' program, which aimed to improve stroke care.

The study's findings revealed significant differences between staff perception and reality. It showed that only 29 % of the staff correctly estimated how long it took stroke patients at their hospital to receive tPA.

Researchers ranked hospitals as high-, middle-, or low-performing based on the percentage of cases where stroke patients were given tPA within the recommended time.

And found that 85% of low-performing hospitals and 42 %of middle-performing hospitals overestimated their abilities to quickly administer tPA.

In addition, nearly one in five low-performing hospitals believed the time it took them to administer treatment was better than the national average.

Lead author Cheryl Lin, M. D., a former researcher at the Duke Clinical Research Institute in Durham, said, "Institutions at any performance level could benefit from making protocol changes that would better align performance with perception. This would have a significant impact on the quality of stroke care delivered across the United States".