The VA’s newsletter “The Rural Connection” in an article written by Alan Geilsamer, Program Specialist for the VA’s Office of Connected Care https://connectedcare.va.gov, relates how mobile technologies have been used successfully to support acute stroke care.
The Department of Veterans Affairs in their National TeleStroke Program uses mobile and telehealth technologies to bring acute stroke expertise to the VA in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Recently, a veteran in San Juan visited the VA’s Caribbean Healthcare System emergency room for some musculoskeletal pain. As he was discharged, he began to have a massive stroke that involved the left side of his brain, while losing strength in the right side of his body, and then he lost his ability to speak.
The VA staff immediately noted the change and took immediate action to complete the work-up and get the information needed to determine if the Veteran would be a candidate for, a thrombolytic drug used to treat acute strokes to help dissolve blood clots.
Dr. Sharyl Martini, Medical Director for the VA’s National TeleStroke Program was in Texas on her way home from a telestroke training program when she was notified about the situation in the VA’s emergency room in Puerto Rico.
She used her mobile tablet to evaluate the veteran in Puerto Rico. The patient’s preferred language is Spanish, so the VA staff helped translate instructions and information between the patient, his wife, and Dr. Martini.
Dr. Martini used several other VA mobile technologies such as the Patient Viewer Interface and Image Viewing Solutions to access the veteran’s medical records, view the patient’s computed tomography, and then entered her medical recommendations into the electronic chart.
Within five minutes after receiving the medication, the veteran started to regain language function, the ability to move his right side, and appeared dramatically better.
The VA’s Office of Connected Care partners with the VA’s Office of Rural Health, works together on the VA’s National TeleStroke Program (NTSP) to provide the mobile tablets to VA facilities. The NTSP currently includes eight telestroke provider sites and has trained an additional 13 sites for the program and aims to have 20 provider sites live by the end of 2018.