Hospitals
The Stroke Center is affiliated with two hospitals, both of which offer emergency treatment, intensive care, hospitalization, rehabilitation, and follow-up care for stroke patients.
University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview
Click here to visit the official website for UMMC, Fairview
University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview is among the most respected teaching institutions in the nation, balancing responsiveness to patients’ needs and wishes with access to innovative treatments and technology to deliver superior health outcomes. The medical center and hospital are a division of Fairview Health Services, a statewide network of hospitals, community clinics, home care and hospice services, pharmacies, senior housing and long-term care facilities.
As the core teaching hospital of the University of Minnesota Medical School, the medical center focuses on patient care, which aligns with the medical school’s mission of research and education. The result is redefining care delivery through excellence in a wide range of programs and services, from heart transplant surgery to cancer treatment and more.
Located on two campuses – one on the east bank and the other on the west bank of the Mississippi River near downtown Minneapolis – University of Minnesota Medical Center includes outpatient and inpatient facilities. Comprehensive services range from primary care, emergency care and the delivery of thousands of babies each year to care of patients with the most complex conditions. Areas of specialization include solid organ and blood and marrow transplantation, heart disease, cancer, neurosciences, pediatrics and behavioral illnesses.
The medical center ranked among the top 50 hospitals in the country in 11 specialties, according to U.S. News & World Reports ‘Best Hospitals” edition and number 28 for Neurology and Neurosurgery. The hospital has 822 staffed beds and receives 44321 ED visits. The center also receives patients from Fairview Ridges Hospital and Fairview Southdale Hospital.
The in-patient service, which provides acute stroke care, includes an intensive care unit and a dedicated neuroscience service with a step-down unit. There are 180-200 stroke admissions/year at UMMC. The inpatient service is supervised by a neurology attending and care is provided by residents who are assisted by a nurse practitioner. Standing orders and pathways for the management of stroke patients are in place.
Out-patient services include stroke clinics providing follow-up care to patients discharged from the in-patient service and also to non-urgent referred patients. There are in addition endovascular clinics staffed by Drs Qureshi and Janardhan. A dedicated 24 hour telephone access is provided for emergency response for acute stroke in the ED or referral from another hospital.
UMMC maintains a prospective stroke database that tracks the ten quality indicators required for JCAHO primary stroke center certification. Members of the stroke program are actively involved in research and enjoy productive NIH-funded research collaborations with the School of Public Health and the Departments of Neurosurgery, Neuroradiology and Rehabilitation.
Hennepin County Medical Center
Click here to visit the official website for HCMC
HCMC is a Level-I Trauma Center and a teaching hospital with a very active Neurology service. U.S. News & World Report has consistently named Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC) one of America’s Best Hospitals. This, along with favorable comparisons to national benchmark standards for patient outcomes, and some of the nation’s most sought-after residency programs for medical students, distinguishes HCMC in patient care, education and research.
Clinical care for stroke patients at HCMC starts with the stroke responder team, providing 24-hour service. This team is staffed by the on-call neurology resident, a stroke fellow, a neurology attending with stroke expertise, on-call radiologists, the ED attending and residents, a clinical nurse practitioner with stroke expertise and, if needed, an endovascular attending physician as well. There is a dedicated pager-code that activates the stroke team. Patients are then rapidly evaluated with a triple-step regimen including head CT, CT angiogram and CT perfusion images.
Therapy with intra-venous thrombolytics is given to eligible patients and Institutional Review Board approved protocols guide intra-arterial thrombolysis as well as mechanical clot-removal in carefully selected patients. The rates of thrombolysis at HCMC are between 10-15% of all stroke admissions. There are clear protocols and standing orders to assist in rapid evaluation and decision making on all acute stroke cases in the ED. The Neurology service accepts stroke referrals especially for acute stroke intervention from surrounding hospitals. The in-patient service includes an intensive care unit, a step-down unit and a dedicated neuroscience service.
There are 150 stroke admissions per year at HCMC. The in-patient service is supervised by a neurology attending and care is provided by residents and an experienced nurse-practitioner (Mary Duplessis-Tchida) with training in neurosciences and stroke. Standing orders and pathways for the management of stroke patients are in place and residents are trained in their use by Mary Duplessis-Tchida. A multi-disciplinary stroke clinic provides care to patients discharged from the in-patient service and also to non-urgent referred patients. These clinics are staffed by 3 stroke attendings, two endovascular attending and a rehabilitation attending in addition to 1 stroke fellow, an endovascular fellow, a geriatric fellow and residents and students. In addition, there is a speech and language pathologist and a psychologist.
HCMC maintains a prospective stroke database that tracks the ten quality indicators required for JCAHO primary stroke center certification. In addition, demographic, clinical information, radiographic and laboratory information on stroke patients is compiled in this database. The database includes an implementation of the TOAST algorithm which automatically assigns stroke mechanism to each admission based on TOAST criteria.
Members of the stroke program are actively involved in epidemiological, translational and clinical research in stroke frequently funded by the NIH. They are participants and PIs of clinical trials involving stroke prevention, treatment and rehabilitation.
HCMC serves as the host-site for MinStroke, a monthly forum for stroke neurologists in Minnesota to meet and discuss issues in stroke. Stroke team-members are also actively involved with the American Stroke Association and take part in community outreach activities for stroke education programs.