A dedicated Acute Stroke Care unit is now open at the Ouellette Campus of Windsor Regional Hospital.
It brings together all stroke care in one location, following a trend that's been implemented across the Southwest corner of the province.
Dr. Mike Winger is the head of Neuroscience at the hospital and is the medical lead for the stroke unit.
Head of Neuroscience at Windsor Regional Hospital, Dr. Mike Winger (photo by AM800's Peter Langille)
He says this brings all the stroke related care together in one place so all patients get the same kind of seamless treatment as efficiently as possible.
Dr. Winger says all stroke patients from across Windsor Essex comes to the same place: "we've got a process improvement so that we identify patients quickly we have a way to get them identified as code strokes they get assessed for TPA and assessed for endo-vascular therapy. The other thing we want to bring in everybody people from Met campus people from Leamington everybody will be funnelled to this area for the exact same care"
District Stroke Co-ordinator Denise St. Louis says this isn't to fix a problem, but to improve already good care: "we knew we were good at the Ouellette Campus on this unit for treating strokes we knew we were doing a good job, with the work we've done in the past year with allied health and nursing we've up that level of good"
Dr. Winger says the expectation for full recovery from a stroke was only about 25% just a couple of years ago, now its closer to 50%.
He says they expect to handle about 500 patients annually through the unit, averaging about 15 people per week.
Stroke patient Donald White from Kingsville says the new unit is helping him recover faster.