Grand Rapids-based Metro Health — University of Michigan Health implemented a clinical communication application for clinicians to help reduce stroke time to treatment from 53 minutes to 29 minutes.
The smartphone and computer-based app is developed by Vocera, a clinical communication and workflow solutions provider.
Teams of Metro Health specialty physicians use the app to collaborate with emergency medical services, neurology, radiology, nursing, laboratory and pharmacy staff while the patient is still in the ambulance traveling to the emergency department. This allows paramedics to send the hospital's stroke team pre-arrival notifications with more context of the patient's information, including name, age, medical record number and state of health.
The communication app has also helped the hospital reduce its average door-to-groin time, or the amount of time required for a patient to reach the neuro-interventional radiology suite, from 114 minutes to 84 minutes. Median door-to-recanalization time, or the amount of time it took to restore blood flow of an occluded artery, also decreased from 148 minutes to 125 minutes.