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INTEGRIS Health Press Release
April 28, 2009
Every 40 seconds, someone in the United States suffers a stroke. In the simplest of terms, a stroke is a “brain attack” – a temporary interruption of blood supply to the brain, causing brain tissue to begin dying immediately. Hence, the faster treatment is administered, the less severe the damage.
Unfortunately, not all hospitals have the necessary personnel, equipment and organization required to rapidly and effectively treat these patients.
With the recent changes from the Oklahoma State Department of Health for providing care to stroke patients, Oklahoma now requires that all facilities who accept stroke patients have access to a neurologist 24/7/365 for immediate consultation services. But for most hospitals in rural Oklahoma, it is not feasible to have a neurological staff on-call 24 hours a day.
That’s why the INTEGRIS TeleStroke Network is using two-way interactive videoconferencing technology to assist rural Oklahoma hospitals when a patient presents in their emergency department with stroke-like symptoms. This first in the state program gives rural hospitals instant access to neurologists at INTEGRIS Baptist Medical Center and INTEGRIS Southwest Medical Center. These highly skilled and experienced experts are often able to detect subtle findings that might otherwise be overlooked. Dr. Lawrence Davis, Medical Director of the INTEGRIS James R. Daniel Cerebrovascular & Stroke Center at INTEGRIS Baptist Medical Center, says “Our primary aim is to get the right treatment to the right patient at the right time.”
In the INTEGRIS TeleStroke Network, specialists use videoconferencing technology to remotely examine the patient, confirm the diagnosis, interpret the brain images and provide recommendations just as if they were at the bedside.
With this type of “on-demand” acute stroke expertise, patients will not need to be immediately transferred elsewhere for evaluation, meaning clot-busting drugs like Activase (tPA), which is proven to save lives and reduce disability in stroke patients, can be administered that much more quickly.
For some hospitals, the TeleStroke service augments existing hospital-based neurologic coverage to help provide 24/7 coverage all year long; for other hospitals, it is the only neurologic expertise consistently available.
INTEGRIS Canadian Valley Hospital in Yukon will be the first rural facility to connect with the INTEGRIS TeleStroke Network on Tuesday, April 28th. The remaining eight rural hospitals within the INTEGRIS system will be connected by 2011, as will two hospitals outside of the healthcare system.
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