Introduction: All stroke patients should receive the same degree of specialized healthcare attention according to the stage of their disease, independently of where they live, their age, gender or ethnicity.
Objective: To create an organized healthcare system able to offer the needed care for each patient, optimizing the use of the existing resource.
Methods: A committee of 14 neurologists specialized in neurovascular diseases representing different regions of Spain evaluated the available scientific evidence according to the published literature.
Results: During the acute phase, all stroke patients must be evaluated in hospitals that offer access to specialized physicians (neurologists) and the indicated diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. Hospitals that deliver care to acute stroke patients must be prepared to attend these patients and need to arrange a predefined transferring circuit coordinated with the extrahospitalary emergency service. Since resources are limited, they should be structured into different care levels according to the target population. Thus, three types of hospitals will be defined for stroke care: reference stroke hospital, hospital with stroke unit, hospital with stroke team.