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BRICK HOSPITAL DESIGNATED AS PRIMARY STROKE CENTER
By Keith Hagarty
Each year, approximately 700,000 people suffer a stroke nationwide, with 500,000 being first time attacks, according to the American Stroke Association.
Ocean Medical Center was recently honored for its work with patients suffering from strokes, and was recently designated as a primary stroke center by the New Jersey Department of Health.
"It's an important credential for us going forward," said Peter Daniels, the president of Ocean Medical Center.
For many years, the medical center has been treating patients who have suffered strokes; however, the state's recent designation of the hospital as primary stroke center now gives concrete guidelines and backing for the program, and additional training for medical staff to provide for a quicker, more efficient diagnosis and treatment process.
"The nice thing about the stroke center we have is we've really upgraded the stroke services over the last year," said Dr. Stephen Martino, a neurologist and medical director of the primary stroke center since its inception two years ago.
"We've made strokes one of the paramount things that Ocean Medical Center deals with," he said. "We've changed it from just routine type of examination by our ER (emergency room) physicians into a neurological emergency, with a neurologist on-call, the nurse practitioner on-call, while the radiologist and ER doctor are all notified right away, then the patient is triaged quickly, gets their labs quickly, gets their CAT scans quickly and gets immediate treatment."
As part of the Meridian Health System, Daniels said Ocean Medical Center looked strategically across all of the clinical services it provides to reflect its particular demographic. With a large senior population throughout Ocean County, the prevalence of strokes is high.
"Here at Ocean Medical Center, and in northern Ocean County and southern Monmouth County, as you look to some of the demands that are placed upon our hospital, oncology comes to mind, cancer care, orthopedic care, cardiac care- which is another important driver of our patients here in terms of admissions and outpatient activity," he said, "but one that we have really focused on in the past couple of years more broadly is neuroscience."
Stroke care is a main component of neuroscience, which also focuses on movement disorders, degenerative nerve diseases, neurosurgery and behavioral health.
"It's a broad clinical service line, but within that service line, stroke care is an important program for us by virtue of the number of patients that are presented here over time at Ocean Medical Center," said Daniels. "The state put together its guidelines to focus in on, expand and upgrade the level of care across the entire state, and it's a program that we highly valued and wanted to get onboard with."
The state's designation of the hospital as a primary stroke center now provides the hospital with a clearly defined set of guidelines to monitor and enhance their ongoing progress and take a proactive initiative throughout the community to get the public aware of stroke risk-factors.
"It's not as if we haven't had the technology, the medical manpower or the basic clinical services to provide good stroke care here at Ocean Medical Center, and it is provided for the most part within the existing facilities," said Daniels, "but it's really a matter of making sure that we're adhering to the state-of-the-art, in terms of the way that we deliver care, the different clinical protocols that are followed, the response times and the turn-around times because it's very important in stroke care in particular that there's an early intervention, a rapid diagnosis and that you clearly bring the patient through the appropriate clinical protocols to be sure that we're advancing the care to that patient as quickly as we possibly can, and to get that patient to the right level of care as quickly as well."
As an example, Daniels pointed to the hospital's use of CAT scan machines to diagnose stroke patients.
"It's not as if we didn't already have CAT scanning capability, but the state requirements are such that we provide the CAT scanning capability now on a round the clock basis," he said.
To further enlighten the community about the risk-factors and the preventative measures recommended for strokes, the program incorporates a series of public outreach programs.
"It's about educating the community," said Daniels. "It's also making sure people have a family physician, that they know how to access their primary care or emergency care and most importantly, be well educated in terms of what the alternatives are, but more importantly, what the signs and symptoms are. That makes a huge difference."
There are several notable warning signs of someone possibly having, or at risk for stroke, said Regina Foley, chief nurse executive of Ocean Medical Center.
"The warning signs are really a loss of vision, either left or right-sided weakness in your arm or leg, complete loss of speech or delay in speech," said Foley. "Those are probably the five biggies."
One of the most important facets of the primary stroke center designation and accreditation by the state is the ability to educate the public and those most at risk for a stroke, said Foley.
"As soon as the public has any, or a combination of these symptoms, they should certainly come to the emergency department to be evaluated," she said. "Those symptoms can occur as they're having a stroke, or it can be a pre-cursor that they're going to have a stroke."
All too often, individuals tend to dismiss the symptoms until it's too late.
"That's the problem," said Foley. "They ignore it, thinking, 'oh, I've had this before, it's no big deal,' but then they end up collapsing at home and they have a massive stroke, or you could also get what they call transient ischemic attacks, where you could get little strokes that happen along the way and get ignored until you have a full blown, big stroke which can be completely incapacitating. Death can occur from a stroke, or you completely lose your ability to speak, your vision and the ability to walk."
Martino, who also lectures at hospital symposiums and throughout the community, said it's always an honor to receive accreditation from the state. But even more is knowing the hospital is excelling in not only treating patients, but also educating the public and staying on "the cutting edge."
"We've been getting very good patient outcomes," said Martino. "Overall, the system is working smoothly, as evident by the state granting us the stroke center certification."
With the backing of the state now in hand, Foley said the program will next look to receive federal recognition from the federal agency of the joint commission in the next 12 months.
"It's kind of like the seal of approval," said Foley.
Stroke treatments and prevention has come a long way in a short period of time, and Ocean Medical Center and Meridian Health System are at the forefront of the advances, said Foley.
"The development of technology that this facility has- meaning CAT scan availability- the competency of medical staff and nursing staff in identification of patients that are symptomatic," she said, "and the other is the drug and medication availability that we use with strokes, such as clot-busting drugs, those are new advances that have only been around for a few years, and patients are clearly in a better position today than they were five years ago."
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