If this is in your area(Brown county, Ohio) contact them and ask why they aren't figuring out a better way to diagnose stroke patients. If you don't do this no one will and stroke patients will continue to have sub-standard care. This is way too important to leave to the medical staff.
http://newsdemocrat.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=137040
Southwest Regional Medical Center recently joined a growing number of rural hospitals to use technology to diagnose and treat strokes.
On Thursday, Jan. 10, the hospital gave a presentation about its new telemedicine stroke robot for the first time to area EMTs and emergency medical personnel, who may use the equipment when responding to stroke calls.
Partnering with UC Health, the new technology positions a robot camera in the emergency room connected to a laptop at the UC Heath Stroke Center. Images and symptons are instantly seen by a sophisticated camera and reviewed by medical professionals at the stroke center.
"This technology is fabulous, it's actually offering us the ability to examine the patient ourselves," said Pam Kimmel, program manager at the UC Health Telestroke Network. "This will be our sixth hospital that we will go live with. We have already seen through several of our other programs that it's really made a difference in the care of our patients."
Kimmel explained how the equipment can save both time and lives. The term tPA stands for "tissue plasminogen activator" and is a protein involved in the breakdown of blood clots. It is used in clinical medicine to treat thrombotic or embolic strokes, but its use is inadvisable in hemorrhagic strokes and head traumas.
"We have a patient that one of the physicians said had he just been given the report of the fellow he would've treated him with tPA but when he actually beamed in with the robot and examined the patient he determined that they were too mild and didn't need it," Kimmel said. "So that patient avoided the risk of hemorrhage."
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During the presentation, Kimmel demonstrated how a doctor would see and interact with a stroke patient by video conferencing Nancy Dalpiaz, a nurse with InTouch Health, which manufactures telemedicine remote presence devices and medical robots for clinical settings.
"The device that I'm on is called RP-Lite and it's used for tele-voice and consult," Dalpiaz explained. "It works on the wireless network so all of the network there out at Southwest has been tested...and the connectivity is good. The device uses what we call remote presence, and remote presence is the ability to be at two places at the same time."
Dalpiaz was using the robot from her home in Cleveland, Ohio and was able to see and visit with the audience in Georgetown.
"What UC stroke neurologists are going to be doing is they're going to be assessing patients that you all bring into the hospital and assess the systems of strokes," Dalpiaz said. "The physicians have total control over the head of this robot."
The physicians will be able to move the machine up and down, from side to side, zoom in and out, and of course, see and communicate with the patients.
Physicians also have the ability to display pictures and give the patients tests to further assess them, their cognitive functions and their visual recognition abilities following a stroke.
Danielle Richards, chief nursing officer at Southwest, explained why the new technology is so important.
"The physician will actually beam in, be in the room with the patient, and the nurse will perform the stroke assessment, and the physician will be able to evaluate the patient as if he were right there," Richards said. "Statistics show that actually there's only about three percent of patients that need to be transferred right to UC for a surgical intervention or to receive medications such as a tPA, which is like a clot buster. So the goal is to provide care close to home. We have ER physicians 24/7 but with stroke care it's so specialized an actual neurologist - part of the stroke team - will assess the patient. Right now UC stroke physicians will actually drive to the outer I-275 hospitals in Cincinnati but it's not possible to drive here because it's going to be an hour or an hour and a half before they get here."
Thanks to a grant, the robot is no cost to Southwest for the first year. Next year, the hospital will have to pay a connection fee based on the number of patients who need to access the robot.
The hospital went live with the new robot on Wednesday, Jan. 16, with the Brown County Chamber of Commerce present.
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