Summa Health’s Telemedicine Stroke Program

Summa Health’s telemedicine program for stroke includes advanced InTouch Health™ robots at emergency departments at Summa Health System – Akron and Barberton Campuses.

Immediate care is crucial to treat stroke patients. Summa’s robots allow stroke neurologists to remotely perform live, real-time audiovisual consultations with the patient and emergency medicine team to speed the delivery of clot-busting drugs crucial to halt and reverse stroke damage. Consider the robot a portal through which a stroke specialist anywhere can be virtually present at a moment’s notice.

A stroke specialist is connected through live video to access a patient visually and work in conjunction with the stroke team to quickly begin the care the patient needs. Through the robot’s monitor, patients and family can also see, hear and communicate with the specialist.

High Quality Stroke Care

Summa Health Stroke Care Center has been designated the Gold Seal of Approval™ as a Thrombectomy Capable Stroke Center by The Joint Commission.

Also, the Summa Health Stroke Care Center has been nationally recognized for earning the American Heart Association (AHA) and American Stroke Association's Get With The Guidelines^® Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award. Summa is the only hospital in the Akron area to have received the American Stroke Association Get with the Guidelines Gold Plus Award consecutively since 2010. The award recognizes our commitment and success in implementing quality stroke care, according to evidence-based guidelines.

In addition, since 2016 we also have been awarded for treating our patients with the clot busting drug faster than national benchmarks, achieving maximum recognition as Honor Roll Elite Plus.

Why is speed important? Because time is brain, and every minute we wait, 2 million brain cells die. Summa Health averaged 36-minute treatment times for administering clot busting medicine in 2020, 24 minutes faster than the national benchmark of 60 minutes. That’s a savings of approximately 48 million brain cells per patient. In addition, we met the national standard of 60 minutes 93% of the time, eight percent better than goal. Furthermore, we met the national goal of 45 minutes 81% of the time, which is 6% better than goal. We also exceeded the newest, very stringent goal of administering the clot buster drug less than 30 minutes, 53% of the time, which exceeded goal by 3%.

In its latest rankings, Healthgrades® named Summa Health one of Healthgrades America's 100 Best Hospitals^TM in four different specialties for 2021, including Stroke Care (two years in a row) and Critical Care (four years in a row).

Summa Health also received numerous clinical achievement awards for 2021 for a number of areas throughout the system including:

• Cardiac
• Critical Care
• Gastrointestinal
• Neurosciences
• Pulmonary
• Vascular