Pulsara Blog

On April 14th, MissionCritical Communications featured the Montgomery County Hospital District’s partnership with Pulsara in an article about public safety apps that are helping frontline workers respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Montgomery County Hospital District (MCHD) is located just north of Houston and covers 1,100 square miles. MCHD is using Pulsara to remotely assess COVID-19 patients and avoid unnecessary exposure, both for physicians and for patients. Using the Pulsara app, MCHD first responders are able to assess the patient’s situation and transmit their information to the hospital, allowing physicians to view electrocardiograms (EKGs), pulse/oxygen readings, and other relevant data. Physicians based at the hospital can then advise EMS on the best way to move forward. 

DAYTON, Ohio (WDTN) – Premier Health, in partnership with Pulsara, has adapted the company’s mobile communications platform for stroke patients to help EMS agencies when they arrive with patients suspected of having COVID-19.

Pulsara’s COVID-19 package enables networked communication (including HIPAA-compliant live video and messaging) across organizations at no charge.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 15, 2020

Bozeman, Mont — Pulsara announced today that they have released a COVID-19 management package available to all EMS and healthcare organizations in the United States for free.

“With confirmed Coronavirus Disease 2019 cases on the rise in the U.S., we know that many EMS and healthcare organizations are rapidly preparing for the management of this crisis within their communities,” said Pulsara Founder and CEO, Dr. James Woodson. “Inter-organization communication has never been more important than it is right now. In this time of need, we are fortunate to be able to serve.”

Saint Mary’s Regional Health System is a Joint-Commission-accredited Level III Trauma Center, located in Russellville, Arkansas. The 170-bed hospital has delivered care to the River Valley community for the past 90 years, and alongside Pope County EMS since 1967.

Saint Mary’s and Pope County EMS have a long-standing relationship built on a shared value of putting patients first. As the only hospital and EMS agency serving their region, they together perform emergency response for 28,000 patients annually.

Because time is muscle during a STEMI, early intervention directly translates to lowering mortality and morbidity rates. At CarolinaEast and surrounding EMS agencies, making the appropriate communication changes has been an effective catalyst in reducing time to treatment and saving patients’ lives.

At Pulsara, our purpose is to improve the lives of patients and caregivers through innovative communication. For us, that means delivering a platform that standardizes communication for ALL teams involved in patient care — including prehospital providers like EMS, urgent care centers, nursing homes, critical access hospitals, and other referring facilities, teams within the destination hospital, and teams who need to communicate between healthcare organizations in cases that require a consult or transfer.

Last month, Pulsara was featured in a follow-up piece to an article published in the Longview News Journal, which described the innovative way healthcare teams in Longview, Texas are using the platform to benefit mental health patients. This new use case reduces hurdles these patients must overcome in order to see a mental health professional in times of crisis:

In emergency conditions like STEMI, patient outcomes depend heavily on the time between onset of symptoms to definitive treatment. As such, clinicians should make every effort possible to reduce any delays during that period. 

To that aim, an algorithm developed by the American Heart Association, and published earlier this week, establishes a standardized process which encourages pre-activation of the ED and determines when direct-to-cath-lab protocols are appropriate.

My Grandfather (who was a very wise man) used to say “It’s a lot easier to pull a rope than push it.” Of course, as a kid I thought he had lost his mind. “Who would ever try to push a rope? It makes no sense!” 

I was right, it makes no sense. Yet, we find ourselves everyday trying to push ideas, initiatives, and process changes on others, and then we just can’t figure out why our “great ideas” don’t get off the ground.

We see this frequently in healthcare. My background is in ED Nursing and EMS, and in my roles in these fields, we pushed each other daily in efforts to get THEM to do things the way WE want them done.

Overlake Medical Center is a Certified Joint Commission Thrombectomy-Capable Stroke Center in the Seattle, WA area. Recently, they posted an article detailing an inspiring stroke survival story. The article also discusses the Overlake's recent efforts to improve treatment times for stroke patients: 

"Overlake’s stroke program has received numerous awards over the years, reflecting its commitment to providing patients the latest technologies and innovative treatments. Staying true to that commitment, the hospital recently implemented use of a smartphone app called Pulsara that mobilizes the stroke care team with a single tap.

As our processes and equipment in EMS continue to evolve, they empower first responders to provide better care for patients. But in order to provide the BEST care, our communication technologies must also evolve and keep pace. 

If you’ve ever felt the frustration of having to repeat the radio report for the umpteenth time, or worse, watched harm reach your patient because of a simple miscommunication, picture this instead:

EDITOR'S NOTE: Special thanks to James Laidlaw for writing today's blog post. You can connect with him on LinkedIn. 

Do you remember the Telephone Game you played as a kid? Everybody gets in a circle and the first person whispers a secret to the person sitting next to them, then that person repeats it to the next in line, and so on. At the conclusion, the last person states out loud what was said to her, and everybody laughs as they hear how much the phrase changed from beginning to end with every player hearing a slightly different message. The entire point of the game is miscommunication.

Miami Valley Hospital, part of Premier Health, was recently featured on the news for their implementation of both the RAPID stroke imaging platform and Pulsara's communication platform. 

"When patients come in to the hospital after having a stroke, there's a lot of information that needs to get collected, and a lot of people are part of the team that collects that information," said Dr. John Terry, Director of Inpatient Stroke Care at Premier Health. "Pulsara allows all those people to be able to communicate and know what everyone else is doing at the same time." Dr. Terry says that that transparency and ease of communication has changed the hospital's stroke treatment protocols in a "very beneficial way."

Pulsara recently partnered with Rea Berg, Virginia Mason Medical Center's Director of the Emergency Department/Observation Unit to present some of the successes the hospital has seen in their treatment times following some process improvements they made. The full webinar can be seen right here. 

Following the webinar, Becker's Healthcare Review wrote up the following article about the presentation. The following is authored by Anuja Vaidya, and originally appeared here. 

One of the biggest contributors to inefficiency in healthcare is a lack of communication, which can lead to lower quality of care and higher costs. Communication in healthcare is siloed for many reasons, including the complexity of the work, the size of health systems, outdated and non-integrated communication technologies, and HIPAA constraints.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Combination of Pulsara and RAPID expands window of opportunity for treatment 

BOZEMAN, MT – September 27, 2019 – Miami Valley Hospital is the first site in the world to use the combination of a specific software application and mobile platform to enhance the treatment used to preserve a patient’s neurological function after a stroke.

While many hospitals use both applications – Pulsara and RAPID – in their stroke care, none have taken the step to combine their capabilities into one, said John Terry, MD, director of inpatient stroke care at Miami Valley Hospital.

Pulsara, a mobile platform, was developed by physicians to improve coordination and communication essential for stroke patient assessment. RAPID is a global leader in advanced imaging.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Alyana Samai is the Director of Stroke Services at West Jefferson Medical Center in Marrero, Louisiana. Aly has been a champion user of Pulsara since 2016, and has led her teams to successfully decrease door to needle times by streamlining and improving communication when it matters most. 

Dear Aly,

We are new clients and implementing Pulsara at our facility, but many of our nurses are concerned that this is going to be "double documentation," more than communication. How can we help them understand that Pulsara can streamline the process, reduce communication frustrations, and not double up on tasks?

Sincerely, 
Prepared for Pulsara

Simply being able to get the right message to the right care team members in the right amount of time can be an incredibly convoluted process in today's healthcare world. Worse, the lack of a reliable system of communication causes hundreds of thousands of medical errors every year.

I've been asked why Pulsara started building a Regional Communication Network for Time Sensitive Emergencies. Here is one of the many reasons...

Misdiagnosis-related harms (death and disability) are concentrated in Vascular Events, Infections, and Cancers. The numbers in this study are staggering, but keep in mind that malpractice claims only represent 1.5% of actual events, and it is estimated that total societal costs are more than $100 billion annually.

Healthcare is burdened by the archaic means of communication. And everyone — from EMS to critical care teams to the discharge teams at the hospital — is feeling the effects. Luckily, hospital and EMS providers no longer need to be stuck in the dark ages of communication. Technology companies like Pulsara and Acuity Link work to streamline the most frustrating and broken parts of the patient care and communication processes from first medical transport through patient discharge.

Acuity Link’s CEO and co-founder, Alex Theoharidis purpose-built the company as a means to address mounting inefficiencies in the medical transportation request process. Today he shares his perspectives around what is needed to streamline non-emergency medical transport (NEMT) logistics in order to improve patient flow, and how solutions like Acuity Link work to elevate a customer’s patient transfer process – and ultimately the entire patient experience.