GE Healthcare names Saint Luke’s Neuroscience Institute its first healthymagination Stroke Solution Site

Saint Luke’s Neuroscience Institute (SLNI) has earned GE Healthcare’s healthymagination first-ever validation of a stroke program based on a rigorous third-party review by Oxford Analytica. The review showed that the program’s coordinated use of people, process, and technology yields better outcomes for people with strokes.

“Stroke statistics are staggering,” said Gabrielle Silver, M.D., head of Neuroscience Global Marketing at GE Healthcare. “One in six people will have a stroke in their lifetime and stroke is the leading cause of long-term disability globally. Our healthymagination initiative seeks to identify and recognize world-class centers of excellence like Saint Luke’s Neuroscience Institute. Finding innovative and replicable models of health care delivery will help us reach the healthymagination goal to increase access, improve quality, and lower cost of health care by 15 percent by 2015.”

The validation process from Oxford Analytica surfaced a number of findings about Saint Luke’s outcomes, including:

• Improved treatment with stroke therapy IV-tPA (clot-busting intravenous therapy), with treatment rates of 25 percent compared to national rates of 2-5 percent.
• Better patient outcomes, including a nearly 50 percent increased likelihood of going home after discharge compared to programs submitting data to the Merci registry representing the best interventional stroke centers in the U.S.
• 27 percent shorter lengths of hospitalization compared to the Merci registry sites.
• More frequent use of diagnostic technologies, with 99 percent of patients undergoing CT scanning compared with 60 percent of patients at other U.S. hospital

GE is making this announcement in conjunction with its first-ever Global Stroke Forum and Advisory Board in Crotonville, NY on June 18-19. Saint Luke’s clinicians will make presentations and help advise the Global Forum along with an audience of stroke experts from around the world. On Wednesday, June 20, some of the international delegates will reconvene at Saint Luke’s Hospital in Kansas City for a personal look at how Saint Luke’s operates and the journey stroke patients take upon arrival.

While in Kansas City, neurology specialists from the United Kingdom, China, and Australia will tour Saint Luke’s emergency room, interventional radiology labs, and other areas of Saint Luke’s Neuroscience Institute and will meet with clinical staff at the institute and regional partners during their time in Kansas City.

Saint Luke’s Neuroscience Institute is a global leader in utilizing both drug and mechanical interventions to block and reverse the permanent and debilitating effects of acute strokes. Its legacy of innovation began in its 1993 inaugural year when doctors performed one of the world’s first intra-arterial stroke reversal procedures. Since then, Saint Luke’s specialists have continued to pioneer new stroke therapies and reverse stroke’s debilitating effects for thousands of patients, and is one of the world’s most experienced and prolific leaders in the use of tPA, an acute clot-busting medication for treatment of ischemic stroke. The institute’s Code NEURO team is on call 24/7 to respond immediately to patients presenting with acute stroke. A commitment to extending those capabilities is reinforced through partnerships with referring physicians, a network of more than 80 outlying hospitals, first responders, and telemedicine.

About Validation
The validation evidence was presented to Oxford Analytica, the impartial third-party agency that manages the GE healthymagination validation process, for review by their independent network of 1,500 distinguished academics at leading universities and research firms. This validation established a framework for evaluating solutions, as defined by improvements across people, process, and technology.

GE Healthcare has committed to validate 100 innovations by 2015. An innovation must meet the criteria established to reduce cost, increase access, or improve quality by 15 percent to become healthymagination validated.

About GE Healthcare
GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our broad expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, drug discovery, biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies, performance improvement, and performance solutions services help our customers to deliver better care to more people around the world at a lower cost. In addition, we partner with health care leaders, striving to leverage the global policy change necessary to implement a successful shift to sustainable healthcare systems.

Our “Healthymagination” vision for the future invites the world to join us on our journey as we continuously develop innovations focused on reducing costs, increasing access, and improving quality and efficiency around the world. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a $16 billion unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE). Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than 46,000 people committed to serving health care professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries. For more information about GE Healthcare, visit gehealthcare.com.