Telestroke

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TeleStroke provides real-time neurological assessment of patients presenting with stroke-like symptoms in your hospital’s emergency department. This expertise-on-demand can help you rapidly evaluate and treat potential acute stroke patients. All of the stroke experts are trained in the practice of TeleStroke and participate in our TeleStroke quality assurance program.

For many communities, telemedicine is an important building block for developing a stroke care system that reaches its citizens. With acute stroke expertise available "virtually" at the bedside, you won’t need to immediately transfer possible stroke patients elsewhere for evaluation, and the patients don’t lose precious time until the administration of tPA or other critical therapy.

Activating the TeleStroke Network

When a patient with stroke-like symptoms presents at a TeleStroke Network member emergency department, the hospital follows the standard acute stroke protocol and calls the on-call stroke neurologist. We then immediately begin the assessment of your patient.

The TeleStroke neurologist contacts the hospital by phone to review the case and initiate a video conference call if appropriate. After the video conference is established, the emergency department physician provides additional information about the patient. The stroke neurologist will then review the patient’s presentation with the emergency department physician and staff will perform a focused neurological assessment.

Upon completion of the exam, the TeleStroke neurologist reviews the brain images and then discusses the findings with the emergency department physician. Together they decide on the best plan of care. The findings and recommendation of the stroke neurologist are stored securely on the TeleStroke Network web site and are available for the hospital to print out and place in the patient’s medical record.