Call the president and ask for results
1. Nothing on 100% recovery statistics.
2. Nothing on 30-day deaths compared to other hospitals.
3. Nothing on the efficacy of their stroke rehab protocols.
4. Nothing on tPA full efficacy.
5. Nothing on their misdiagnosis percentage of strokes, especially young strokes.
Guidelines prove nothing.
You'll' want to know results so
Call that chief executive officer(Mel McNea)
general number (308) 568-8000 and demand to know what the RESULTS are; tPA efficacy, 30 day deaths, 100% recovery, misdiagnosis percentage.
The wothless puffery article here:
http://www.nptelegraph.com/news/local_news/gph-awarded-for-stroke-care-education-efforts/article_a8089866-6f61-11e7-83b7-27901b8b9162.html
Every 40 seconds, someone in the U.S.
has a stroke, and every four minutes, someone dies of stroke, according
to the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association.
Stroke
is the fifth leading cause of death in the U.S., accounting for about
one in 20 deaths. It is also a leading cause of serious long-term
disability.
For stroke
patients, getting the proper care quickly is vital to survival. Great
Plains Health was recently recognized for its efforts in treating stroke
patients. GPH is one of two hospitals in Nebraska that earned the
American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The
Guidelines Stroke Gold Plus achievement award. The North Platte hospital
also received the AHA/ASA’s Target: Stroke Elite Plus Honor Roll Award.
At
3 p.m. on Tuesday, a representative from the associations will be at
the Great Plains Health Education Center to present staff members with
the award. The hospital will also be recognizing local first responders
for their work to ensure that stroke patients get the care that they
need.
“It’s a collective
effort,” said Dr. Anil Kumar, a neurologist at Great Plains Health.
“Different teams are working to save the brain.”
Most
of the time, stroke patients are taken to the emergency room by crews
from North Platte Fire and Rescue or fire departments from smaller
communities who have requested a tiered response from North Platte,
according to Fire Chief Dennis Thompson.
A
stroke patient’s care usually starts with a 911 call. Thompson
emphasized that people should be familiar with stroke symptoms and
should call 911 immediately if someone appears to be having a stroke.
“Do
not wait to see if signs and symptoms pass,” Thompson said. “Time is
critical. The longer a stroke goes untreated, the greater the risk of
debilitating damage to the brain.”
Other
conditions have symptoms similar to a stroke, said Robin Dimmit, an
emergency room technician at Great Plains Health and a paramedic with
the Stapleton Volunteer Fire Department.
“Sometimes it’s a diabetic emergency,” Dimmit said, adding that alcohol-related problems also can cause strokelike symptoms.
Regardless, she said, it’s always better to be safe than sorry.
Once
an ambulance arrives, the patient is loaded up and given oxygen. An IV
is started and vitals are monitored as the patient is rushed to the
emergency department. Paramedics assess the patient so that their
findings can be used by ER staff to determine how the patient’s
condition is progressing.
The
crew also calls a stroke code into the ER, which activates a team of
staff members including a pharmacist, laboratory technician and
radiologist who wait to meet the ambulance.
“When
we arrive in the Emergency Department with a stroke patient, we stop
only long enough to weigh the patient while they are on our cot and then
take them directly to the Radiology Department for a CT (scan),”
Thompson said.
While the
patient is having the CT, the cot is taken back to the scale so it can
be weighed separately. This allows ER staff to determine the patient’s
weight and a pharmacist to figure the dose of a drug called tissue
plasminogen activator, or tPA.
“It’s
a clot buster,” said Tonya Hinrichs, a pharmacist at Great Plains
Health. “It will actually break up the clot in the brain that is causing
the stroke.”
While tPA can be
very effective, it can’t be used on many patients. Hinrichs explained
that some patients may take medications that could cause an adverse
reaction to tPA and could even result in death.
The
time frame to use tPA is also limited, which is one of the reasons it’s
so important to go to the hospital as soon as possible. Unfortunately,
many people opt to wait to get treatment, said Chastity Orr, stroke
program coordinator at Great Plains Health.
Farmers and ranchers can
be particularly bad about trying to “rub dirt on it,” Orr said. They
often think they’ll feel better if they lie down for a while, but doing
so allows more irreparable damage to the brain to occur.
“In
1 to 2 seconds, a person can lose 32,000 brain cells depending on the
location of their stroke,” Orr said. “That’s their mobility, their
ability to talk, to eat, to recognize a family member, their behavior —
everything that makes them able to function in their daily lives.”
Hinrichs
said that when patients are brought in for a stroke, it’s important for
someone to come with them or to be available to provide important
information to the medical team, including the patient’s “last known
normal.” It’s important for the staff to know when the patient was last
seen acting normally so they can determine whether tPA can be
administered.
“We’ve had
patients come in alone,” Hinrichs said, explaining that this can be
problematic because stroke patients sometimes cannot communicate.
This
is because some strokes occur in the part of the brain that controls
language, Kumar said. Sometimes patients suddenly can’t understand what
people are saying to them; other times they can decode what they are
hearing but can’t speak coherently.
Depending
on the severity and location of the stroke, various forms of
rehabilitation may take place to help patients get back to normal. Some
experience a full recovery, while others are left permanently disabled.
Several
risk factors can increase someone’s chance of having a stroke,
including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, being overweight,
diabetes and family history.
Training
to maintain an active lifestyle, balance diet and taking precautions
such as getting a stent placed if a patient is at risk for a stroke
could save a person’s life later, Kumar said.
Stroke care “isn’t just treatment, it’s prevention,” Kumar said.
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