It’s midnight, and a stroke patient arrives at a community hospital, needing a trained neurologist to diagnose them and administer a clot-busting thrombolytic—and fast. In a field where “time is brain” and 1.9 million neurons are lost every minute, timely access to care is everything.
The best practice is for clinicians to orchestrate the events, with nurses practicing at the top of their license. Increasingly, the clinicians aren’t even in the room. They’re miles away, calling the shots through a high-tech device with crystal clear audio and video.
That’s life at Access TeleCare, the largest provider of acute specialty telemedicine in the United States. The company’s 700+ clinicians and 2,600+ clinical programs fill a critical gap for partners like rural hospitals trying to attract talent or urban clinics competing for specialists. It provides timely access to a quality clinician for every patient in need.
To deliver on that promise, telemedicine needs the same immediacy and human connection as an in-person experience, says Erica St. Angel, chief technology and information officer at Access TeleCare.
“How do we make a connection with someone? We need quality audio and video because we’re not there in person,” Erica said.
In its first years, Access TeleCare relied on a patchwork of homemade systems and separate tools. Audio and video could be unclear, and the platforms were far from intuitive, often taking multiple clicks for a clinician to reach a patient.
That changed in 2015, when Access TeleCare partnered with Zoom, becoming the first company to use the platform in a HIPAA-regulated healthcare environment.
