One healthcare system used Pulsara to achieve record door-to-puncture times and improved inter-organizational team communication for better care coordination.
BOZEMAN, Mont., — Pulsara, the leading mobile telehealth, communication, and logistics platform that unites healthcare teams and technologies across organizations during dynamic events published new details on Seattle-based EvergreenHealth’s record improvements in patient care. Reporting on their hospital and stroke program growth—and the increased communication challenges that growth brought on—the EvergreenHealth Case Study reveals the solutions they found to streamline care and communication across the whole organization spanning three sites.
Serving a population of nearly 850,000 residents, EvergreenHealth is a growing two-hospital healthcare system with two emergency departments—one in Kirkland, Washington, and a freestanding emergency department in Redmond, Washington. Historically, the stroke teams were using pagers and audio calls to coordinate care. However, as both the hospitals and the stroke program grew, they began straining the limits of what former standard technologies could support.
“As we were growing the service line, bringing on EvergreenHealth Monroe, considering the freestanding ED, and bringing more neurohospitalists into our program, there was potential for communication to continue to become more fragmented,” said RN Nurse Navigator for EvergreenHealth’s Stroke Center, Meg Briggs, BSN, RN, SCRN. “You can imagine what it was like with the neurohospitalists spanning three sites, having to keep it all together.”
And on top of all the growth, patient acuity was only getting higher, meaning that more patients required more intensive and time-critical care. “Anything we can do to streamline communication and care with high acuity, that’s a win,” Briggs explained.
To optimize communication within their growing system, EvergreenHealth implemented a communication and telehealth solution that could scale with them: Pulsara. In the summer of 2020, they achieved a record low door-to-puncture time of 78 minutes with Pulsara. By the summer of 2021, they hit a new record low: 46 minutes. Within one year, EvergreenHealth decreased their record door-to-puncture by an additional 41%. “Pulsara has helped us trim down those times, because of the communication,” said Briggs. “The messaging has been the biggest help for us because now we don’t need pagers. And beyond that, we shave off minutes by not having to make a lot of phone calls.”
For more details and access to the full report on how EvergreenHealth improved communication with their stroke team, ultimately hitting two record low door-to-puncture times within the span of one year, download the case study here.
About EvergreenHealth
EvergreenHealth is a two-hospital healthcare system and freestanding emergency department based in Kirkland, Washington, and is part of a public hospital district serving north King County and south Snohomish County. Their main campus is a 318-bed medical center and Level III Trauma Center located in Kirkland, with a second 72-bed campus in Monroe and a freestanding emergency department in Redmond. EvergreenHealth serves nearly 850,000 residents and offers care in 70 clinical specialties.
About Pulsara
It’s about people. During the most critical moments in life, Pulsara unites distributed teams and fragmented technologies as dynamic events evolve on a scalable communications and logistics platform, improving the lives of people in need and those who serve them.
We envision a world where needless suffering is eliminated because communities can unite and communicate without friction. Studies report an average decreased treatment time of approximately 30% when using Pulsara, the evidence-based standard of care. For more information, visit www.pulsara.com.