Case Study: St. Bernards Medical Center Improves Stroke DTN Times by 48%

How an Arkansas hospital improved their door-to-needle benchmark success rates across the board and achieved a record treatment time of 18 minutes.

St. Bernards Medical Center, a 381-bed acute-care hospital in Jonesboro, Arkansas, has made remarkable strides in stroke care after expanding consistent use of Pulsara in 2023. Known for its excellence in cardiac and stroke treatment, St. Bernards holds both the AHA Gold Plus Stroke Award and Advanced Primary Stroke Certification from The Joint Commission.

Despite already strong performance, Stroke Program Coordinator Joanne Sullivan and the team identified opportunities to improve communication and reduce treatment delays—especially in EMS-to-ED workflows. At the time, stroke alerts were still coming in by phone, limiting the ability to coordinate care before patient arrival.

After seeing success with Pulsara in their STEMI program, St. Bernards expanded the platform to include stroke care. The change enabled earlier stroke alerts from EMS, faster CT prep, and real-time coordination across departments. The team also implemented creative strategies like using pivot nurses to triage walk-in patients, maximizing Pulsara usage throughout the ED.

The results speak for themselves: Since implementing consistent Pulsara usage, the team improved their sub-60-minute door-to-needle rate by an average of 48%, reached a record DTN time of 18 minutes, and saw sub-30-minute times in 43% of cases—up from just 2%.

Download the case study to learn how Saint Bernards is transforming stroke care through team collaboration and streamlined communication.

To learn more about how teams are using Pulsara to streamline stroke treatment, check out 10 ways Pulsara helps during time-sensitive emergencies.