Barnesville hospital is the only hospital in the Ohio Valley that is set to collaborate with the Ohio State University, which just received a $265,000 telemedicine grant.

 

Though it's exactly what it seems, it's not a typical medical consult. Emergency department physicians at Barnesville Hospital can now get a consult with expert neurosurgeons at Ohio State University by initiating a stroke alert and connecting via a telemedicine link.

 

"In stroke care, you have such a limited time window to receive treatment. From the moment of the onset of symptoms you have to seek medical rapidly and receive it within three hours," said Diana Greene-Chandos, director of neuroscience at the Ohio State University Medical Center.

 

Doctors say in a stroke you should look for symptoms by evaluating the face, the arms and the speech.

 

With telestroke that's all possible, even for doctors hundreds of miles away. There is a webcam so the OSU doctor can see the patient, a monitor so doctors and the patients can see the neurosurgeon, and a conferencing system so doctors and patients can speak to one another.

 

"Before telestroke we had no neurologist to read the CT scans. So technically we couldn't do thrombolytics in the field, or in the rural hospitals," said Barnesville Hospital emergency department director Dr. Fred Shoff.

 

Wednesday doctors held a trial run, as though a real-life potential stroke victim was being cared for. All the standard tests were performed, motion abilities, and their sensitivity, even their ability to identify words and objects, just how it will work when the telestroke machine is put to it's first real-life test.

 

"The whole idea is quality of life, not just quantity of life, but quality of life, and if they're having residuals from their stroke, the quality of life could be devastating," said Shoff.