Pulsara Blog

How one Arkansas hospital is using healthcare communication technology to dramatically improve time-to-treatment for stroke patients

BOZEMAN, Mont., October 17, 2023 — Pulsara, the leading mobile telehealth, communication, and logistics platform that unites health care teams and technologies across organizations during dynamic events, published new details on Arkansas-based Baptist Health Medical Center-Little Rock’s record improvements in treatment time for stroke patients. The Baptist Health Medical Center-Little Rock Case Study showcases the work the facility has put towards improving communication among EMS and hospital stroke teams and highlights the resulting decrease in time-to-treatment for stroke patients.

In 5 months, Baptist Health Medical Center - Little Rock reduced their average door-to-puncture time for stroke patients by 58% 

Baptist Health Medical Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, is an 843-bed medical center and certified Comprehensive Stroke Center. As the largest private not-for-profit hospital in the state of Arkansas, Baptist Health - Little Rock provides comprehensive services using the latest in innovative technology. 

Previously, the stroke team was notified about incoming patients through phone calls and text messages. The operator would use the paging system to activate a code stroke, and then an additional IVR code stroke as needed. Members of the stroke team would receive the page, which contained only the patient’s location, via text or phone call.

Though the system worked on a basic level, Sharon Aureli, RN, BSN, MSN, SCRN, CNOR, RNFA, CNL, and Neuro Program Line Manager at Baptist Health, knew that a more sophisticated communication system could help their teams reduce treatment times. “I always think there’s room for improvement,” she said.

Editor's Note: This post is adapted from a report first published by the Victorian Agency for Health Information, a division of Australia's Department of Health. Check out the original version here. 

A recent report published by a division of Australia's Department of Health, the Victorian Agency for Health Information, confirmed the benefit of using communication and logistics technology for patient care at Latrobe Regional Hospital in Traralgon, Victoria. New data from the Australian Stroke Clinical Registry showed as much as an 80% reduction in time-to-treatment for critical stroke patients.

Latrobe Regional Hospital is a busy regional health service in the eastern Victorian town of Traralgon, with 328 beds and 2,465 staff servicing a catchment of more than 270,000 people. The emergency department alone sees 42,000 people each year.

At the recent National Stroke Quality Improvement Workshop, Latrobe Regional Hospital shared how they used registry data to evaluate newly implemented technology designed to streamline day-to-day operations and facilitate better treatment times. The Australian Stroke Clinical Registry data played a key role in evaluating the use of Pulsara at Latrobe Regional Hospital, responding to staff questions about how the health service would measure the performance and impact of the new technology.

Arkansas hospital achieves consistent <60 minute average door-to-balloon time for STEMI and 80% decrease in average door-to-CT time for stroke

National Park Medical Center (NPMC) is a 163-bed hospital that has been delivering healthcare to the community of Hot Springs, Arkansas, for nearly 70 years. Offering a full range of inpatient and outpatient services, NPMC, which is part of the Lifepoint Health family of hospitals, is also home to the Heart and Vascular Center of Central Arkansas. The facility was recently recognized for excellence through the receipt of Chest Pain Center Accreditation with PCI through the American College of Cardiology Accreditation Services. 

Previously, when the emergency department received an ambulance call that a patient was experiencing chest pain and possibly a STEMI, an ECG would be sent from the ambulance to the emergency department by fax. But the transmission wasn’t always successful, according to Emergency Room Director Priscilla Couch, RN, MSN. And even when the ECG did make its way to the ED, there were hiccups in communicating the information to vital members of the healthcare team. “Our ER doctor would call the cardiologist and try to explain the patient’s condition without a visual, which takes time,” recalls Couch. “Then, with limited information, the cardiologist would have to decide, well, is that a real STEMI or not?” That deliberation would leave Couch waiting before she put out calls asking cardiac cath lab staff, including an interventional cardiologist, radiology technologists, and a cardiac-care nurse, to assemble. “When a patient is experiencing a STEMI, those are precious minutes that are being wasted,” Couch says.

In an effort to improve patient care, National Park Medical Center chose to adopt Pulsara, a mobile healthcare communication program that unites care teams on a single dedicated channel for each patient.

After streamlining communication for their stroke teams with Pulsara, Overlake Medical Center in Bellevue, WA reduced door-to-needle times for tPA patients by 31%.

Overlake Medical Center in Bellevue, Washington, is a 349-bed hospital serving the Puget Sound region since 1953. The hospital treats more than 245,000 outpatients and 18,000 inpatients each year, and is a Joint Commission-certified Advanced Stroke Center. 

As a thrombectomy-capable facility with a large staff of specialists, nurses, and more, Overlake Medical Center sees ~900 acute stroke cases per year. With this volume, providing time-sensitive care is of the utmost importance to producing positive patient outcomes. Overlake knew they needed a streamlined means of communication to help make existing stroke workflows more efficient. 

“With so many people in the system, unnecessary team members were being alerted for a stroke case, which added extraneous noise as they cared for patients,” said Overlake Medical Center’s Stroke Team leaders .

It has been a challenging year in healthcare. The second year of the COVID-19 pandemic has brought burnout, staffing shortages, and the continued struggles associated with trying to care for patients during a pandemic. 

In the midst of it all, many healthcare systems have risen to the challenge and devoted themselves to providing better, faster, and more efficient care for their patients. They've achieved amazing things in 2021, and, in spite of the setbacks and challenges, have found ways to continue to deliver top-notch care for their patients.

Join us as we take a walk through Pulsara's 2021 case studies, celebrate the stories of some of our partner organizations, and highlight the amazing results they've achieved this year!

Large Vessel Occlusion (LVO) strokes are considered to be one of the most severe types of strokes. As with all other stroke types, rapid treatment is key. Mechanical thrombectomy is now the accepted standard of care for treating LVO, meaning that it's critical to take the patient to an interventional-capable facility as quickly as possible—even if that means taking them somewhere further away than the closest available hospital. Time is of the essence; are you up to speed on what to look for when assessing for LVO? 

It’s an oft-quoted fact that for patients suffering from a stroke, 1.9 million neurons are lost every minute their condition goes untreated. Every minute makes a difference—not just between life and death, but in the patient's quality of life once they survive. Will they be able to walk downstairs? Feed themselves? Communicate with their loved ones?

There are many factors that determine how quickly it's possible for a patient to receive treatment. However, there is one consistent obstacle in the way of getting patients timely treatment: the time it takes providers to communicate vital information to everyone on the team. 

Breakdowns and bottlenecks in healthcare communication systems frequently cause a myriad of delays in patient care. Legacy systems like radios, pagers, fax machines, and multiple phone calls connect clinicians but aren't always able to efficiently get the right message to the right person at the right time. Combined with the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, it's clear that our current systems of communication need to be reimagined. Healthcare officials must begin to think differently. 

Your acute care, collaboration, and coordination solution needs to be scalable and flexible, enabling you to adapt quickly to the dynamic needs of patients and clinicians—and span across all organizations involved in patient care. By replacing legacy systems with one solution that covers the entire care continuum, health providers can achieve reduced treatment times, conserve resources, and improve the lives of both patients and caregivers.

When: The evening of April 27 in the USA; 11 AM on the 28th in New South Wales, Australia

Cost: FREE

Registration: Click here to register

Read on for further details!

On February 19th, 2021, the European Stroke Organisation (ESO) published a new guideline on Intravenous Thrombolysis for acute ischaemic stroke. 

The new guideline comes from a study aimed at providing evidence-based recommendations to help physicians make clinical decisions regarding intravenous thrombolysis for acute ischaemic stroke. Published in the European Stroke Journal, the new guideline is the first in a series of around 10 that are expected to be published in 2021. 

The new guideline makes forty specific recommendations for stroke treatment. The authors of the study outlined the 8 they consider the most important, which are quoted as follows: 

What do EMS and hospital care teams have in common with NASCAR drivers?

Quite a bit, as it turns out. The success or failure of both hinges on one thing: time. 

It might surprise even dedicated fans to learn that all of the cars on the track are limited to the same top speed and horsepower range. With this being the case, how can it be that there is such a large disparity between first and last place?

The answer: The race is won and lost during the pit stop.

Picture this:

About 12 hours into your 24-hour shift, you and your partner are finally sitting down to your first real meal of the day.

Just as the first bite of warm food hits your lips, the tones drop—an all-too-familiar scenario in the world of first responders. 

You’re dispatched to a 51-year-old male reporting chest pain. You walk in the door to a very distraught family, gathered around a man clutching his chest. He is pale and sweating profusely. You meet your partner’s eyes, and you know you’re both thinking the same thing. You quickly obtain the ECG and your suspicions are confirmed: tombstones in leads II, III, and AVF.

In time-sensitive emergencies, time is tissue. Every minute makes the difference in your patient's outcome, for better or worse. 

That's why UCHealth and AMR - Colorado Springs / El Paso County partnered with Pulsara, a healthcare communication and telehealth platform, to save time when patient outcomes are on the line. Pulsara creates a secure, unified patient channel—replaces multiple phone calls, radio reports, faxes, and pagers—and allows care teams to communicate efficiently and effectively when treating patients.

In this live-action retelling of a true story, watch how AMR and UCHealth use Pulsara to streamline and speed their communication processes throughout the patient's journey, making sure that every member of the care team is in the know, when they need to know—from dispatch answering the 911 call, to the hospital staff closing the case after the patient’s treatment is complete.

Over the past five years, Brunei's number of stroke cases have increased by 57%, making stroke the country's fourth-highest cause of death—and the main cause of disabilities. Now, a study conducted over the past two years found that the average age of stroke patients in Brunei is decreasing.

Earlier this year, in the weeks before COVID-19 changed life and healthcare as we know it, Latrobe Regional Hospital near Melbourne, Australia, was busy laying the groundwork for a new communication system between their hospital teams and Ambulance Victoria. Over the course of the next few months, Latrobe was able to implement Pulsara for treating patients across multiple departments, including stroke, mental health, pediatrics, trauma—and most pressingly, COVID-19. 

A new study shows that every 15-minute decrease in door-to-needle time is linked to lower all-cause mortality. How can we work to reduce door-to-needle times?

When a neurologist utters the phrase "time is brain," the implication is that every minute counts in treating each stroke patient. A recent study is further confirming what stroke teams have known since 1993: efficient treatment is everything to better outcomes in stroke care. 

JACKSON, Miss., Sept. 30, 2020 — Healthcare entities across the state have experienced declines in patient numbers during the COVID-19 pandemic, with many patients delaying or avoiding life-saving treatment for serious conditions such as stroke or heart attack over fears of the virus.

For Latrobe Regional Hospital (LRH) near Melbourne, Australia, streamlining communication has been a major area of focus, both to improve patient care and to strengthen collaboration across its healthcare system. Up until the beginning of 2020, they used a combination of phone calls and pagers to interface among Emergency Services, ED, and hospital staff—resulting in inefficiencies and challenging communication for caregivers.