Intermountain Healthcare was already a leader in TeleHealth response time for stroke victims. Its 5 minute median time to first response was far below the national average. But with the new notification service in partnership with xMatters, Intermountain Healthcare has reduced the overall time to connect the on-call neurologist to the requesting emergency doctors to less than 3 minutes from the time of initial request.

1. Intermountain
Healthcare
Streamlines Stroke Notifications
And Improves Patient Outcomes

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Who Is Intermountain Healthcare?
Intermountain Healthcare is a Utah-based not-for-profit
system of 22 hospitals, 185 clinics, a medical group with
some 1,400 employed physicians, a health plans division
called SelectHealth, and other health services. Helping
people live the healthiest lives possible, Intermountain is
widely recognized as a leader in clinical quality
improvement and in efficient healthcare delivery.
Confidential and Proprietary

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During a Stroke:
Confidential and Proprietary
• A patient loses 32,000 brain cells per second
• That’s 1.9 million every minute
• Patients should arrive at the hospital within two hours
and receive treatment within three hours for best
recovery

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A Challenging Environment:
Confidential and Proprietary
• Many Intermountain physicians live in mountainous
areas where wifi signals do not penetrate
• Traditional paging technology was unreliable for
reaching doctors over long distances
• Transfer specialists could not tell whether doctors had
received their messages, increasing patient wait times
• Neurologists’ dynamic on-call schedules were not
shared with transfer specialists

5. 5Confidential and Proprietary

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Improvement with xMatters:
Confidential and Proprietary
“We had difficult and varied escalation
protocols. The initial algorithm was complicated
and drawn-out.”
- Kristi Hinckley, Transfer Center Supervisor

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Always a Leader:
Confidential and Proprietary
Intermountain Healthcare already had a 5 minute mean
response time for stroke victims, far below the national
average.

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Improvement with xMatters:
Confidential and Proprietary
Neurologists receive timely notifications regardless of
their mobile provider
Intermountain IT support teams
have less management
overhead due to fewer
escalations to alternate devices

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Improvement with xMatters:
Confidential and Proprietary
Intermountain administrative assistants set up dynamic
on-call schedules inside xMatters with the intuitive visual
scheduling tool. They can input a neurologist’s calendar
and rotation schedule in advance. xMatters uses rules to
notify different physician groups depending on the time
of day, so admins create the monthly on-call schedules
once and the system determines which groups to notify.

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Improvement with xMatters:
Confidential and Proprietary
Each physician may carry
multiple devices that can
receive notifications. xMatters
automatically notifies the right
device according to on-call
and escalation schedules, as
well as individual physician
preferences.

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Improvement with xMatters:
Confidential and Proprietary
“The Intermountain Stroke request process is
quick and efficient every time because it’s
simplified and to the point. This is because of our
dedicated 24/7neurologists, a great Transfer
Center team, and the programming capabilities
of xMatters.”
- Kristi Hinckley, Transfer Center Supervisor

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Benefits:
Confidential and Proprietary
The streamlined process provides reliable, targeted
notifications to on-call neurologists.
It also provides the ability to ‘blast’ a notification to the
entire group, then escalate to specific physicians based on
time of day and physician schedule

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Benefits:
Confidential and Proprietary
Intermountain Healthcare has reduced time to connect the
on-call neurologist to the requesting emergency doctors
to less than 3 minutes from the initial request.
That’s a 40% reduction!

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Benefits:
Confidential and Proprietary
Intermountain’s Stroke Telehealth Service connects
neurologists with patients through in-room television
monitors for immediate assessment.

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Improvement with xMatters:
Confidential and Proprietary
“The Intermountain Stroke request process is
quick and efficient every time because it’s
simplified and to the point. This is because of our
dedicated 24/7neurologists, a great Transfer
Center team, and the programming capabilities
of xMatters.”
- Will Young, IT Service Management Process Owner

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Benefits:
Confidential and Proprietary
Transfer specialists can
validate notification
delivery and
troubleshoot any
notification issues. Each
doctor’s response comes
with a timestamp for a
permanent record.

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Improvement with xMatters:
Confidential and Proprietary
“By implementing xMatters in our notification
workflow, we’ve been able to quickly and reliably
engage our physicians, which leads to faster
evaluation and treatment for our acute stroke
patients,”.”
- Catherine Repko, TeleHealth Operations Initiatives Manager

18. 18Confidential and Proprietary