New Video Conferencing To Help Rural Hospitals With Strokes

Winston-Salem, N.C - Forsyth Medical Center (FMC) announced a new video conferencing network to help rural locations with strokes and neurological problems.

The program will let staff at participating hospitals to rapidly connect with highly trained, board-certified neurologists using videoconferencing technology at the patient's bedside.

Hugh Chatham Memorial Hospital in Elkin, NC, Brunswick Community Hospital in Supply, NC, Kernersville Medical Center in Kernersville, NC, and Twin County Regional Hospital in Galax, VA, are participating in the network. A number of other hospitals will join the network in the future. 

"We can now quickly bring world-class emergency stroke and critical neurology care to hospitals that may lack 24/7 on-call neurologists or that want to strengthen their current primary stroke care services," says Dr. Cheré Chase, M.D., medical director of stroke and neurocritical care at Forsyth Medical Center.

Because of the shortage of experienced, trained neurologists in smaller communities, many stroke victims bypass their local hospitals, causing delay in receiving treatment. Now, they can be treated locally, saving lives and improving the chances for a better recovery.

Rural and small, suburban community hospital emergency department physicians, intensive care unit physicians and hospitalists will be able to have real-time physician-to-physician consultation to quickly determine the best course of treatment for patients requiring emergency or advanced neurological care.

When a potential stroke victim enters the emergency department, the staff will be connected to an on-call expert neurologist and establish a videoconferencing link using a mobile unit that can be brought to the patient's bedside.

The consulting neurologist will then be able to view and discuss diagnostic test results, including CT scan images performed at the local hospital. During the consult, physicians, patients and family members will continue to have real-time discussions about diagnostic results, course of treatment and patient response.

A significant advantage of having an experienced critical stroke care neurologist involved is to assist in determining if the clot-busting drug tPA should be part of the treatment. This is important as tPA must be administered within a three-hour window from the onset of the first stroke symptoms. It will also allow participating network hospitals to provide more advanced stroke care for up to six hours, reducing the need to immediately transfer patients to a comprehensive stroke center such as Forsyth Medical Center for additional care.

"When a person suffers a stroke, 1.9 million nerve cells in the brain die every minute," Dr. Chase explains. "This steady loss of brain cells can often be curtailed through the use of tPA, but determining its appropriate use is best done by trained and experienced stroke and critical care neurologists."

For participating community hospitals, having this level of physician expertise on call will help to save lives and brain function for many patients and may eliminate the need to transport patients to a certified primary stroke center or comprehensive stroke center for further treatment.

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