PRESS RELEASE: CHRISTUS Good Shepherd Medical Center - Longview Achieves 59% Decrease in Door-to-Needle Time with Innovative Telemedicine Platform, Pulsara

By replacing pagers and phone calls with mobile-first technology across the entire patient care team, a hospital achieves better patient outcomes and care team collaboration.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 27, 2020

BOZEMAN, Mont. – Pulsara, the leading telemedicine communication platform that connects teams across organizations, announced today the publication of a case study featuring CHRISTUS Good Shepherd Medical Center - Longview, a Joint Commission-certified primary stroke center in Longview, Texas and part of the CHRISTUS Good Shepherd Health System. The case study examines the record-breaking treatment times the hospital has achieved by implementing Pulsara’s mobile-first care team communication platform across their entire patient care team, including members from the EMS, ED, nursing, CT and neurology departments. 

“Shortening treatment times is critical to the quality of life and recovery of the patients,” said stroke program coordinator Jennifer Reeves, RN, MSN, ASC-BC. Implementing Pulsara has “...cut down on the excessive word of mouth and allowed us to use one tool to communicate and one clock to refer to.”

This integration has enabled the medical center to exceed national benchmarks for stroke treatment and unite the interorganizational care teams into one unified communication platform. CHRISTUS Good Shepherd Health System has long been committed to health care excellence and working to improve the care they provide the communities they serve.

While clinicians were providing excellent patient care, the care teams were working on different communication systems, so keeping information updated and accurate was more difficult than it needed to be. “We recognized the opportunity to improve the way patient and care teams worked together. One challenge we found was that everybody providing care was looking at their own clocks, which weren’t necessarily in sync,” said Reeves. 

Without changing any established protocols, the hospital was able to easily replace legacy communication tools, such as pagers and phone calls, with Pulsara’s mobile, HIPAA-compliant, device-based app that streamlines sharing of critical patient information. 

“This implementation created a new level of cohesion in the care team’s stroke care processes and overall workflow,” said Reeves. “Most importantly for us, that translates to better care provided to patients faster, in a situation where time makes all the difference.”

In 2019, CHRISTUS Good Shepherd Health System and its EMS partners successfully activated 472 stroke cases and achieved the following noteworthy metrics: 

• A 20-minute time savings for the stroke team to prepare and mobilize resources; 
• A 59% decrease in door-to-needle time for patients receiving tPA; 
• And 100% of all door-to-needle in under 60 minutes, 87% in under 45 minutes and 58% in under 30 minutes. 

“Improving the lives of patients and caregivers through innovative communication is our purpose at Pulsara," said Dr. James Woodson, Founder and CEO of Pulsara. "These improvements are not just numbers to us. They represent measurable improvements that directly impact people's lives. We're honored and thrilled to support forward-thinking care teams like CHRISTUS Good Shepherd.”

To read the full case study, click here.

Press Contact:
Hannah Ostrem
Director of Marketing
Pulsara
Hannah.Ostrem@pulsara.com 
(877) 903-5642

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ABOUT CHRISTUS GOOD SHEPHERD HEALTH SYSTEM 

CHRISTUS Good Shepherd’s medical centers have cared for the community for more than 180 years combined. Our not-for-profit health system includes hospitals in Longview and Marshall; Level III and Level IV Trauma Centers; two freestanding Emergency Centers; the region’s first Level III NICU; comprehensive outpatient services; and medically integrated wellness facilities. In addition, from primary care to a full range of specialties, our 700 plus physicians and advanced care providers of CHRISTUS Trinity Clinic are here to serve the community with compassionate care.

Our mission is to extend the healing ministry of Jesus Christ, and we are proud to bring Catholic, faith-based care to East Texas.

ABOUT PULSARA

Pulsara is a telemedicine communication platform that connects teams across organizations. What makes Pulsara unique is its ability to enable dynamic networked communications for any illness or injury. With Pulsara, clinicians can add a new organization, team, or specialist to any patient event, dynamically building a care team even as the patient condition and location are constantly evolving. 

Simply CREATE a dedicated patient channel. BUILD the team. And, COMMUNICATE using audio, live video, instant messaging, data, images, and key benchmarks. Studies report an average decreased treatment time of nearly 30% when using Pulsara. Pulsara is the evidence-based standard of care. For more information, visit https://www.pulsara.com