CarePoint Blue Sky Neurosciences' Aizaz Hundal Receives Physician Founders Award

CarePoint Blue Sky Neurosciences neurohospitalist Aizaz Hundal, MD, was recently given CHRISTUS Health’s Physician Founders Award for leading the effort to establish CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Hospital - Westover Hills in San Antonio as a comprehensive stroke center.

The comprehensive stroke center certification is the highest and most rigorous stroke certification. It’s awarded only to those hospitals that possess the necessary expertise and resources to receive and treat the most complex stroke cases, including advanced imaging, mechanical thrombectomy, neurosurgical capabilities, and specialized critical care. Patients who go to a comprehensive stroke center will always receive the highest level of care.

According to the Joint Commission, “Achieving this certification means you’re dedicated to raising the bar for your organization’s performance — evaluating and evolving the care your patients receive at every touch point in your stroke care continuum. This patient-centric approach is better for your patients, their families and your program.”

Dr. Hundal, who also does a lot of telemedicine work for Blue Sky Neurosciences, saw firsthand the need to elevate regional stroke care. Inspired by how much of a difference timely treatment can make in a patient’s recovery, he set out in late 2025 to build a comprehensive stroke center at Westover Hills from the ground up, hoping to help not only his own patients, but also patients across the CHRISTUS system and in the expanding community.

Achieving this certification means you’re dedicated to raising the bar for your organization’s performance — evaluating and evolving the care your patients receive at every touch point in your stroke care continuum. This patient-centric approach is better for your patients, their families and your program.

- The Joint Commission

Dr. Hundal began working with numerous teams across the hospital, including neurology, neurointerventional radiology, emergency medicine, nursing, radiology, critical care, hospital administration, and quality improvement. With their help, he worked on increasing efficiency, expanding treatment options, redefining protocols, and more. By September 2026, Westover Hills had received its comprehensive stroke center certification.

Since the creation of the center, Dr. Hundal and those around him have produced incredible results, including:

• Median door-to-needle time of 33 minutes
• 87.5% of eligible patients received thrombolytic treatment within 60 minutes
• Dysphagia screening increased to 100%
• 100% compliance with antithrombotic therapy
• 95.6% compliance with statin therapy at discharge
• 22 mechanical endovascular reperfusion procedures performed

“For me, the most meaningful part of this accomplishment is knowing that patients in our community now have access to a level of stroke care that previously may have required transfer elsewhere,” Dr. Hundal said. “That’s something our entire team can be proud of.”