These people pushing this are f*cking idiots if they don't see that these mobile stroke units will soon become obsolete. The Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize will make this totally obsolete. And with tPA having a 88% failure rate, it seems doubly stupid to go down this route. Does absolutely no one read any current news on stroke at all? This may be the best they can do for now but it seems they are determined to have a failed short term project. I really don't care how famous these hospitals are, they still are stupid.
http://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/roi-mobile-stroke-units
In stroke care, swift treatment is key to preventing death and
disability, and health systems looking to get ahead on incentives for
population health might consider new investing .
The Cleveland Clinic
and University of Texas Health are using the nation’s first mobile
stroke units to treat stroke patients sooner, and both show promise in
preserving patients’ quality of life and saving a great deal of money
for the U.S. healthcare system.
Currently, when someone
experiencing stroke symptoms makes a 911 call, they are not fully
evaluated until they enter the hospital, and if they’re suffering an
ischemic stroke, it takes on average 62 minutes for them to receive the
clot-busting, brain-saving tPA (tissue plasminogen activator) therapy,
said Stephanie Parker, RN, project manager of UTHealth’s Mobile Stroke
Unit in Houston.
In other words, that’s a loss of around one
hundred and twenty million neurons, since two million die every minute
during a stroke.
[See also: Mobile health vans' value proposition.]
In
contrast, mobile stroke units can be dispatched to the scene and
literally bring the ER to the patient’s driveway. Inside a unit, a
portable CT scanner images the patient’s brain, providing immediate
results for determination of whether the patient should be treated with
tPA.
“We can bring a highly trained team of individuals with no
other distractions directly to the scene,” said Peter Rasmussen, MD,
director of Cleveland Clinic’s Cerebrovascular Center. And via
telemedicine, "[the stroke unit] can bring a world caliber expert, a
clinical neurologist, to the home, versus a patient going to the local
hospital,” he added.
“The mobile stroke unit provides faster
time-to-treatment and also reduces costs,” Rasmussen said. “Most of the
cost is in the cost of caring, in rehabilitation. The best way to reduce
the cost is to introduce treatment as quickly as possible.”
According
to Rasmussen and Parker, mobile stroke units may be able to reduce the
need and costs for acute care and improve outcomes to the extent that
rehabilitation services become unnecessary or are significantly
lessened.
If the Cleveland Clinic and UTHealth show that’s
possible, mobile stroke units have the potential to save billions of
dollars if they are incorporated into ambulance fleets throughout the
country. And Rasmussen indicated that there is interest from many
academic and non-academic healthcare centers throughout the United
States.
Currently, the mobile stroke unit is undergoing a two-year
study at UTHealth, the home of the nation’s first unit. The study aims
to ascertain if administering tPA faster improves patient outcomes, and
then measure cost effectiveness, Parker said.
Use the labels in the right column to find what you want. Or you can go thru them one by one, there are only 29,120 posts. Searching is done in the search box in upper left corner. I blog on anything to do with stroke.DO NOT DO ANYTHING SUGGESTED HERE AS I AM NOT MEDICALLY TRAINED, YOUR DOCTOR IS, LISTEN TO THEM. BUT I BET THEY DON'T KNOW HOW TO GET YOU 100% RECOVERED. I DON'T EITHER, BUT HAVE PLENTY OF QUESTIONS FOR YOUR DOCTOR TO ANSWER.
Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.
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