We offer telestroke services to hospitals throughout the region
A new technology that’s more convenient for doctors and results in faster treatment for patients is being used at Nebraska Medicine. Telestroke is the use of electronic audio and video communication in order to provide care for stroke patients, not only at Nebraska Medicine, but for other hospitals throughout the region that do not have a stroke-experienced neurologist available 24/7. Telestroke provides real-time expert neurological assessment and recommendation of treatment for patients presenting with stroke-like symptoms at other hospitals.
With our telestroke service, we are able to visualize and interpret brain images (CT scans) of stroke patients from other parts of the Midwest. CT scans are a important part of the acute stroke evaluation. With our system we can upload these brain scans from the other remote hospitals very quickly, thus initiating treatment much sooner.
We use the "hub and spoke" model, in which one of our six telestroke neurologists at Nebraska Medicine ("hub") communicates, assesses, and recommends treatment for stroke patients at our “spoke” community hospitals. This offers great benefits to other hospitals within the region:
- Provides the care of 24/7 on-call stroke experts with additional training in vascular neurology
- The technology has been shown to reduce the amount of time it takes to identify and treat a stroke patients with tPA
- Reduces physician recruitment and on call pay expenses
- Increases satisfaction among emergency physicians, who may not be comfortable administering tPA
- Has been shown to be extremely favorable among patients and physicians alike
If your hospital is interested in improving your stroke care and providing 24/7 stroke neurologist coverage please contact Denise Gorski, MSN, RN, neuroscience clinical program manager at 402.559.7222.