NCT03672890

Telestroke for Comprehensive Stroke Care in Acute Stroke Ready Hospitals

• Status: Completed
• Phase: —
• Study type: Observational
• Enrollment: 551 (actual)
• Sponsor: University of Minnesota · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

TELEstroke for Comprehensive Stroke Care in Acute Stroke Ready HospiTals (TELECAST) is a prospective single-center study evaluating guideline-based acute ischemic stroke care at an Acute Stroke Ready Hospital (ASRH) pre- and post-initiation of a specialist telestroke inpatient rounding service. TELECAST will study the following clinical endpoints: diagnostic stroke evaluation, secondary stroke prevention, health screening and evaluation, stroke education, inpatient complications, and stroke recurrence rates. Additional relevant non-clinical data will include patient and provider satisfaction scores, transfer patterns, and a cost analysis.

Detailed description

Telestroke is a validated intervention that improves the triage and emergent treatment of acute stroke, specifically related to the use of intravenous thrombolysis. Effective urgent stroke evaluation and secondary stroke prevention is also essential to decrease the risk of recurrent stroke, however, there have been no studies to date examining the use of telestroke to improve delivery of non-emergent inpatient stroke care per American Heart Association (AHA) guidelines. Currently, access to stroke specialist expertise is limited resulting in significant disparities in stroke care. Previous publications have identified that patients in rural areas may receive sub-optimal stroke care that does not follow accepted guideline recommendations. Telestroke is a cost-effective mechanism to deliver specialist stroke care to hospitals that do not have in-person stroke consultation available. The aim of TELECAST is to determine whether specialist telestroke inpatient rounding improves guideline-based acute stroke care when compared to non-specialist stroke care. The primary outcome of TELECAST is a composite score comprising 4 categories: diagnostic stroke evaluation, secondary stroke prevention, health screening and evaluation, and stroke education. Individual components of the primary outcome were primarily derived from AHA stroke guidelines. Additional outcome measures include individual analyses of the components of the primary outcome as well as the complication rate, stroke recurrence rate, transfer rate, patient and provider satisfaction levels, and a cost-analysis. All outcomes will be assessed at 1 year post-implementation, with data accruement beginning after a 3-month lead in phase.

Conditions

• Stroke

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Telestroke	Telestroke is an audiovisual communication network that allows for coordination of stroke care from a distant 'hub' site (the telestroke provider location) to an originating 'spoke' site (patient location) in a HIPAA compliant fashion. In TELECAST, inpatient telestroke rounding will be used to oversee the urgent diagnostic stroke evaluation, secondary stroke prevention, health screening \& evaluation, and stroke education in patients admitted with stroke.

Timeline

• Start date: 2018-10-02
• Primary completion: 2019-07-30
• Completion: 2020-07-01
• First posted: 2018-09-17
• Last updated: 2021-02-16

Locations

5 sites across 1 country: United States