Doctors ‘fail to treat stroke as emergency’

East Riding Council will tomorrow consider the findings of an 18-month review of care in East Yorkshire, which found many GPs were failing to spot stroke victims and treat them as an emergency.

The report said: “The panel was informed by one of the stroke consultants and one of the stroke co-ordinators at Hull Royal Infirmary that they were seeing patients coming into hospital via their own transport with symptoms of stroke instead of coming in by ambulance, which was the correct procedure. These patients had been referred by GPs who had not called for an ambulance.

“It was also their opinion there was a lack of general awareness from GPs about stroke and the best way to deal with people presenting with symptoms, although they thought the problem lay predominantly with the Hull-based GPs as opposed to the ones working in the East Riding.”

Recommendations include the maintenance of “robust and consistent” registers of stroke and mini-stroke patients at all GP surgeries. A total of 613 people suffered a stroke in the East Riding in 2009-10.