May 9 2013
Quincy Valley Medical Center recently held a special training and demonstration event as part of the launch of the hospital's new Robotic Telestroke Program (on May 6, 2013).
The Robotic Telestroke Program, coordinated through Providence Sacred Heart's comprehensive Stroke Center, will directly link physicians at Quincy Valley Medical Center to Sacred Heart's nationally certified, award-winning stroke center, allowing Quincy area patients and their physicians access to neurologists 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The program is a partnership between Quincy Valley Medical Center and Providence Sacred Heart. Within moments of a request for a medical consultation, a Providence specialist can activate the robot to assess the patient as though he or she were in the same room.
Due to a national shortage of experienced neurologists, many patients in smaller communities who have experienced a stroke have chosen to bypass their local hospital, causing delays in treatment. Others who received initial care in their local hospital were transferred to large regional hospitals in order to be seen by a neurologist. However, the Robotic Telestroke Program should help to reverse these trends.
"Our goal is to bring expert stroke care to patients in community hospitals such as Quincy Valley Medical Center, allowing patients to remain under the care of their primary physician and close to home whenever appropriate," says Tena Cramer , Director of Neuroscience Services at Providence Sacred Heart.
By using technology to bring the neurologist into Quincy Valley Medical Center, patients and physicians have access to a wider range of specialists, technologies, and services that are otherwise unavailable, thus reducing the need for transfer to a high-level medical referral center like Providence Sacred Heart.
Stroke expert Madeleine Geraghty, MD., shares, "The ability for the consulting stroke neurologist to visually share in the evaluation experience—to participate in the patient's examination as if they were at the bedside with the community emergency room physician—is invaluable in detecting stroke and in differentiating the low risk/minor stroke from the potentially catastrophic stroke."
When it comes to stroke, the faster patients can be diagnosed and treated, the better their outcomes. As a result, Quincy Valley Medical Center can now provide world-class stroke care when time matters most.
For more information, contact Michele Wurl , Director of Marketing & Public Relations at Quincy Valley Medical Center at 509-787-5349 or Email.