In reply
We thank Sheppard et al, Bray et al, and Manfredini et al for their interest in our study on weekend stroke care.1 The results Sheppard and colleagues quote reiterate the need for better access to urgent stroke care at weekends. As such, we fully agree that addressing this issue should be a key consideration for future configurations of stroke services.
In terms of conducting research, administrative data holds many advantages including being longitudinal, timely, and inexpensive, as well as covering all hospital admissions. Both sets of commentators quote results from other stroke-specific data sets with their own advantages and, consequently, highlight the opportunity to use these different sources to complement each other and create a more comprehensive and readily available assessment of stroke care to aid service improvement.