Data from the Australian Stroke Clinical Registry (AusCR) has confirmed the benefit of new notification technology on patient care at Latrobe Regional Hospital (LRH), showing time to receiving treatment was reduced by as much as 80% for critical stroke patients.
Clinical quality registries like the AusCR collect data on select medical conditions. VAHI supports a number of registries primarily so that health services can access meaningful information for clinical practice improvements and decision-making.
At the recent National Stroke Quality Improvement Workshop, LRH shared how they used registry data to evaluate newly implemented technology designed to streamline day to day operations and facilitate better treatment times.
LRH is a busy regional health service in the eastern Victorian town of Traralgon, with 328 beds and 2,465 staff servicing a catchment of more than 270,000 people. The emergency department alone sees 42,000 people each year.
The health service decided to trial the Pulsara Telehealth App (the App) to facilitate access to time critical treatments, with the aim of improving patient outcomes and quality of life.
The App is a tool based in the ambulance that is used to notify the hospital of anyone coming into emergency requiring time critical care. It was initially implemented for stroke and STEMI patients (a type of heart attack that is more serious and has a greater risk of serious complications and death[1]).
However it has proved useful for a wide range of patients, including those with major trauma, sepsis, COVID-19 and any patient with complex conditions.
AusCR clinical registry data played a key role in evaluating the App at LRH, responding to staff questions about how the health service would measure the performance and impact of the new technology.
Using clinical registry data, a three-month pre-and-post review of the App showed a significant reduction in the time to treatment for critical patients.
For stroke patients, the improvement was a reduction of over 80% in the time it took for patients to receive a CT scan. There was also a 44% reduction in time to first medical review for thrombolysed stroke patients (those who have received thrombolysis treatment to dissolve blood clots[2]).
Overall, the App has substantially improved patient care at LRH, as well as facilitating improved communications across all treatment teams and areas. Registry data was key to confirming this initial improvement and will help to support further innovations and improvements in the future.
For more information about AusCR or other VAHI-supported clinical registries, please contact Louise Kelly, VAHI Clinical Registries Senior Project Officer, at [email protected]
[1] https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/22068-stemi-heart-attack#:~:text=is%20a%20STEMI%3F-,An%20ST%2Delevation%20myocardial%20infarction%20(STEMI)%20is%20a%20type,electrical%20current%20travels%20through%20them, accessed 1 February 2023
[2] https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stroke/treatment, accessed 1 February 2023