What Is Telestroke Service?

Telemedicine is an electronic communication system which allows medical information exchanged from distance to improve patient’s health status more efficiently.
In the United States, patients who needed to see a higher-level of specialist were usually referred to a tertiary care hospital. Because, most of the physicians who had received additional sub-specialty training worked at tertiary care hospitals. In 1994, MGH and Brigham which are both prominent Harvard-affiliated tertiary care hospitals merged to form Partners’ Health Care which provide patient-present stroke consultations to other doctors at community hospitals. In 2000, Dr. Schwamm from a Partners-affliated institution, he and his team started to offer Telestroke service. Many hospitals could not afford stroke neurologist coverage, so they agreed to test telemedicine service. TeleStroke service helped in saving vital time for patients when it was severe.
The case shows that organizational issues in the deployment of innovative networked IT applications. One of the main issue was reimbursement. Many telemedicine consultation services had not reached long-term financial viability. Another main issue was complex and aging IT infrastructure of MGH. The case describes the development and current status of TeleStroke. The executives of TeleStroke Service need to decide how to response to request from participating hospitals during expanding the use of telemedicine