HealthONE Virtual Network

HealthONE/WesleyCare Virtual Network was established in 2006 as the first telemedicine stroke program in Colorado, provided by neurologists at Swedish Medical Center. It has grown from the original 6 rural locations to over 60 partner locations in Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska and Wyoming.

HealthONE/WesleyCare Virtual Network is an innovative program that uses HIPAA-compliant telemedicine technology to bring the best of healthcare to communities that need 24/7 access to specialists, but do not have local resources. Through H1VN/WCVN, partner hospitals and clinics in a four-state region have access to real-time, fully interactive acute consultations with medical specialists 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Our goals are simple: Improve patient care, keep patients and families in their home communities, and assist in transport of a patient if a higher level of care is needed.

Clinical support is available 24/7/365 by contacting our HealthONE Access Center or Wesley OneCall Center. This allows partner sites to make a single call to request a telemedicine consult. The Call Centers provide dedicated clinical staff to: assist with telemedicine consults, admit or transfer a patient, have a conversation with a clinician, coordinate care and keep current with patient progress. HealthONE/WesleyCare Virtual Network’s instant connection to specialty physicians with Swedish Medical Center, Wesley Medical Center, The Medical Center of Aurora, and Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children, allows patients to be examined and diagnosed hundreds of miles away. H1VN/WCVN’s telemedicine systems involve the installation of a video-enabled examination system in Emergency Departments and Medical Floors of remote hospitals and a wireless laptop or desktop that resides with an on-call physician.

HealthONE/WesleyCare Virtual Network delivers smooth video from any internet connection, dramatic zoom capabilities, and real-time communications with perfect audio and video synchronization. The patient and physicians both have two-way video and audio for a more accurate and personal experience.

Neurologists from the Swedish Medical Center neuroscience center of excellence are available 24/7/365 to provide consults in the emergency department for such Emergent Neurologic Conditions as, but not limited to: First time seizure, status epilepticus, severe headache, neuro muscular emergencies, subarachnoid hemorrhage, altered mental status, sub acute stroke

There is a shortage of mental health coverage in our region, especially in rural areas. HealthONE/WesleyCare Virtual Network's goal is to meet that need with its TelePsychiatry program. Partner sites can request consults 24 hours a day, seven days a week and a psychiatrist performs a full psychiatric evaluation through telemedicine with patients. Our psychiatry providers assist on site providers with diagnosis, short and long term treatment recommendations and medication guidance. These patients receive a rapid psychiatric evaluation and in patient level of medication intervention. These two factors, along with supplementation of our Tele-Behavioral Health program, Community Mental Health Centers, and hospital based resources decreases the wait time for inpatient behavioral health bed placement.

Licensed clinicians available 24/7/365 at The Medical Center of Aurora’s Behavioral Health and Wellness Center will evaluate patients at partner locations to: help determine safety of discharge, need for transfer to an inpatient behavioral health unit, assist with safety planning, provide resources for patient follow-up, and refer to outpatient clinics when appropriate. Our clinicians help maneuver your patients to the next level of care as quickly as possible.

In the past, the options for evaluation infants and children with suspected heart disease at hospitals with no on site pediatric cardiologist were limited. And, because of the infrequent occurrence of heart problems in infants and children compared to adults, the services of a pediatric cardiologist may be desired at many different locations but not with enough frequency to warrant the presence of a full-time pediatric cardiologist.

Through the telemedicine remote presence mechanism children with suspected congenital heart disease can now be evaluated in their home community using echocardiography (ultrasound of the heart). This non-invasive technique provides accurate diagnostic information about the structure and function of a child’s heart and has become the primary tool in the evaluation of these patients.

Echocardiograms can be viewed in real time as they are performed by the technician at the patient’s local hospital. This allows timely diagnosis with medical management, if required, to be initiated without delay in patients who are found to have significant heart disease. If necessary for additional treatment, transport can be arranged to Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children. This also avoids the unnecessary transport of children who are ultimately found to have a normal cardiac evaluation.

This program also allows immediate communication of results and consultation with the referring primary care physician or neonatologist, as well as discussion with the patient’s family. It also allows a higher level of supervision and education of the technologists performing the study, who in many cases are primarily “adult” cardiac sonographers with limited experience in the evaluation of children. Over time, this can significantly increase the quality of the echocardiographic studies in local community hospitals and provide an improved level of care at the local level.

Pediatric Neurologists at Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children provide partner locations assistance with evaluating head injuries, concussions, migraines, seizures/epilepsy, developmental delay, cerebral palsy, spasticity, movement disorders, sleep disorders, neuromuscular disorders, hypotonia, short term and long term treatment and medication guidance.

HealthONE Virtual Network has partnered with Gerald Schaefer, MD to provide pediatric genetic consults via telemedicine to patients, either inpatient or outpatient, of Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children. These consults include:

• Congenital anomalies (birth defects)
• Dysmorphic features (unusual appearance)
• Metabolic disorders (acidosis, hypoglycemia, etc.)
• Abnormal newborn screen
• Positive family history of a genetic disorder or abnormal genetic test results
• Specific system disorders (cardiomyopathies, non-immune hydrops, central apnea, etc.)
• Neurologic problems – seizures, abnormal muscle tone, movement disorder
• Suspected syndrome
• Abnormal prenatal findings

Trained endocrinologists are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year via the HealthONE/WesleyCare Virtual Network. Evaluations include newly diagnosed or uncontrolled diabetes mellitus, thyroid disorders, metabolic syndromes, gland disorders, endocrine hypertension, pituitary disorders, and dyslipidemias. Endocrinology evaluations include recommendations for short and long term treatment recommendations, medication and next level of care.

The viability and importance of the HealthONE Virtual Network is evidenced by the success of its stroke program. By the end of December, 2014, over 4,000 stroke telemedicine consults had been conducted with our network partners. Of those, 785 patients were deemed eligible for t-PA, the only clot-dissolving drug proven highly-effective at helping people experiencing strokes.

This translates to a 20% treatment rate for the clot‑busting therapy—an approximately four-fold increase over the national rate. 59% of rural patients treated tele-medically stay in their local hospital as well as 87% of urban and suburban patients, rather than being transferred to another facility.

• Stroke kills almost 137,000 Americans each year. That's 1 in every 18 deaths.
• On average, one American dies from stroke every 4 minutes.
• Every year, more than 795,000 people in the United States have a stroke.
• Stroke is the 4th leading cause of death in the United States.
• About 40 percent of stroke deaths occur in males, and 60 percent in females. (Source: American Stroke Association)

Synchronized stroke care reduces time to notification of suspected large vessel occlusions. As the region’s leading provider of telestroke services, the HealthONE Virtual Network provides 24/7 neurology coverage for more than 50 hospitals in a five-state region. Now we’ve added artificial intelligence to automatically detect suspected large vessel occlusions (LVOs), providing earlier identification of stroke and helping improve time to therapeutic intervention.

Artificial intelligence is used to automatically detect suspected LVOs on CTA imaging and directly alert the on-call stroke specialists about potentially treatable patients.

Stroke-protocoled CTA images from remote hospitals are sent directly to the HealthONE Virtual Network where an advanced deep learning algorithm automatically analyzes them on a HIPAA-compliant cloud.

When a suspected LVO is found, an alert is sent to the on-call stroke specialists within less than 6 minutes,* where they are able to review images using a mobile viewer.

Automated detection could help identify more suspected LVOs and provide earlier notification to the stroke specialists, reducing time to therapeutic treatment and ensuring that only appropriate patients are transferred.

Being a part of the HealthONE Virtual Network allows our partner facilities to provide some of the most advanced stroke care to their communities.

*1 FDA De Novo DEN170073, Core Lab Study, 2 Center, n=44, Sensitivity 87.8%, Specificity 89.6%. 2017.

Many neurological conditions requiring inpatient care need assessment and treatment from an experienced neurologist in an inpatient setting.

EEG tests are used to help diagnose brain conditions such as brain tumors, sleep disorders, epilepsy and other seizure disorders. They can detect abnormalities in your brain waves and electrical activity by using small, metal disks called electrodes.