One of the leading providers of telestroke services in the United States is touting new statistics that indicate a 25 percent improvement in treatment of stroke sufferers via telehealth when compared to overall treatment rates.
REACH Health executives say their platform has enabled remote clinicians to administer the clot-dissolving drug tissue Plasminogen Activator (tPA) in nearly 35 percent of all ischemic stroke cases, compared to the national average administration rate of about 10 percent. When administered within three hours of the onset of stroke conditions, tPA has been found to deliver "profoundly improved outcomes."
[mHealth masters: Our fascination with wearables will fade.]
“We are very encouraged by the results being achieved by our clients,” Steve McGraw, president and CEO of Atlanta-based REACH Health, said in a press release. “We believe that the advanced clinical workflow in REACH Access enhances remote collaboration and enables faster and more accurate clinical diagnoses."
"Unlike first-generation telemedicine solutions that are reported to achieve tPA administration rates hovering near 20 percent, our next-generation approach to telemedicine, based on workflow-facilitated consultations, is raising the bar in terms of results and outcomes," he added. "REACH Access clients have achieved an average tPA administration rate of 34.6 percent over the last two years. We believe these represent some of the highest tPA administration rates in stroke treatment today.”
REACH Health executives pointed to this news alongside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's December 2014 report that lists stroke as one of the leading causes of death in the United States, and further noted that strokes have dropped from fourth to fifth on the list – indication, they say, that telestroke services are saving lives.
Telestroke platforms like REACH Access are designed to enable clinicians in remote locations to collaborate with experienced neurologists to quickly and accurately diagnose a stroke – as well as to determine if those patients are at risk of cerebral hemorrhage, which would prevent them from being able to receive tPA. The platform is typically based at a large hospital or health system (the hub) where the specialists are located, then is linked to any number of smaller hospitals or clinics (the spokes) via a telemedicine hookup.
Among REACH Health's more prominent partners is the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), which serves as the hub for the 15-hospital South Carolina Stroke Network. Robert Adams, MD, director of the stroke network and REACH MUSC, said more than 90 percent of South Carolina's residents now have access to stroke care within an hour.
“When we began to establish our telestroke network, South Carolina was facing a cruel reality in stroke care: If a stroke patient was taken to a rural hospital that could not rapidly assess and treat the patient with tPA, that patient was very unlikely to receive the drug due to the length of time required for transfer to a stroke center,” Adams said in the press release.
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