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Acute ischemic stroke is a common diagnosis that requires inpatient admission. The percentage of patients with acute stroke who are cared for by neurologists versus generalists varies substantially from institution to institution, and prior research has suggested that patient outcomes are better if neurologists serve as primary physicians. These results, however, might have been confounded by unmeasured population variables. Previous studies might have yielded biased results because patients who were sicker (i.e., had more medical comorbidities) could have been assigned preferentially to generalists over neurologists.
In a large retrospective observational study, researchers used a statistical tool called propensity analysis to evaluate 26,9…