20% Reduction in Door To Needle Times with GD’s Telehealth Solutions

For almost 65 years, Southeast Health, an Alabama community health system serving residents of southeast Alabama, southwest Georgia and the Florida Panhandle, has relied on dedicated staff and advanced technology to save patients. Not only is this 420-bed health system the region’s only Level II Trauma Center, evaluating around 160 patients each day, it is now a Certified Comprehensive Stroke Center—with the help of GD’s Telehealth Solutions.

In 2018, Southeast Health’s Emergency Department (ED) was looking to improve their communication between emergency teams. They needed a way to get alerts from EMS about incoming patients so they could prepare for patient arrivals. These alerts had to come through in a way that didn’t disrupt patient care in the ED with constant loud noises and alarms. Finally, the ED needed to shave precious minutes off of treatment times to provide quicker and better patient care. They turned to GD for help.

With GD’s highly configurable solutions, Southeast Health structured their GD CAREpoint Workstation and GD e-Bridge Mobile Telemedicine App to deliver alerts from EMS to ED teams without disrupting patient care. Now they use GD’s Telehealth Solutions every day to improve care for both stroke and trauma patients. Here’s how:

• The GD CAREpoint receives all incoming EMS communications; recording the calls and storing them for later access.
• Pages to the Emergency Department teams are tied to an overhead pager system that notifies physicians to check their phones, which are kept on silent, for incoming patient case alerts on the GD e-Bridge app. The app documents information such as live ambulance ETA, attached voice clip of EMS call & patient symptom reports.
• The incoming patient case information allows Stroke and Trauma teams to prepare for the patient before arrival, shortening time to treatment. This has helped Southeast health to become, and remain, a comprehensive stroke center.

The alerts configured for the Southeast Health Emergency Department Paging System are:

• Stroke Now: Stroke is happening now within the hospital, no voice clip attached. Last well known time is included in the message.
• Stroke ED: Stroke is incoming to the ED, teams check their GD e-Bridge app for incoming ambulance ETA and attached voice clip from EMS call
• Trauma Now: Trauma is happening now within the hospital, no voice clip attached
• Trauma ED: trauma is incoming to ED, teams check their GD e-Bridge app for incoming ambulance ETA and attached voice clip from EMS call

GD worked with Southeast Health to configure their mobile telemedicine app for both Stroke and Trauma team communications. Now, the ED team is able to receive alerts and reports on incoming patients so that they can properly prepare before arrival and lessen time to treatment, without disrupting patient care with loud announcements and alerts.

Being so prepared for incoming patients has helped the ED significantly reduce time between patient arrival and treatment. Treatment times have also been shortened by GD’s more streamlined alert system, which helped Southeast Health become a Comprehensive Stroke Center and maintain their certification. What’s more, Southeast Health uses the GD CAREpoint for quality and assurance checks by listening to recorded calls.

“GD always alerts the Code Stroke team of an incoming patient via EMS, which provides a better clinical picture of the patient. The EMS voice clip is sent to the team through the GD Telehealth app that typically encompasses the following patient information: last known well time, current vital signs, blood sugar, a summary of stroke symptoms the patient is currently experiencing and the patient ETA. This prepares the team to provide focused timely care that our stroke patients deserve. It is our goal to provide timely intervention for our stroke patients to decrease death and disability. The GD Telehealth app connects the dots for our Stroke Team and enhances internal communication between team members.” Ramona Johnson MSN, ASC-BC, SCRN, RN-BC  Stroke Program coordinator.

“GD’s e-bridge app provides the trauma response team with direct information from local EMS providers. E-bridge produces a rapid voice clip transfer of essential information, which decreases additional calls from response team members outside of the ED trying to ascertain the potential needs of inbound patients. This product facilitates improved communication with minimal input from staff.  It is a great asset to our trauma program” says Becky Burke, Trauma Coordinator.

Southeast Health’s statistics support this immense progress. Between 2018 when they first adopted GD’s telehealth solution and 2020, door to physician time has improved by 29%—2.4 minutes. In this same timeframe, door to needle time has improved by 20%—15 minutes.

The GD Responsive Innovation team works with healthcare teams across the country, like they did with Southeast Health, to configure solutions to each healthcare team’s specific needs. Visit us to start configuring a telehealth solution that enhances your process and improves your patient care.

About GD (General Devices)

GD is a 40+ year Med Tech company that specializes in mobile telemedicine and telehealth that, enables simply smarter patient care by empowering hospitals, EMS, mobile integrated healthcare, community paramedicine and public safety responders with the most comprehensive, highly configurable, and affordable medical team communications solutions. Learn more at general-devices.com.