New Stroke Integrated Practice Unit

Confluence Health’s Primary Stroke Program is pleased to introduce its’ Stroke Integrated Practice Unit, an innovated model to help serve our stroke patients. We have added to our services a Stroke Clinic within the current Neurology space at central Washington hospital. This clinic will begin operation starting September 1st, 2020. The stroke clinic will be seeing patients who have recently been discharged from their acute hospital stay or acute rehabilitation unit stay. The focus on the Stroke clinic is to establish the cause of the stroke, ensure the patient understands what type of stroke they may have had, and to the help them better understand their personal risk factors.

Additionally, the Stroke Outcomes Nurse (Jamie McElroy), will begin seeing patients in select areas in their home for up to 1-year post discharge. This exciting part of the IPU is called Stroke Mobile and begins Oct 1, 2020. These developments will serve stroke patients where they need it most either at their homes and within clinic. The focus of the Stroke Outcomes RN and the Mobile visits is behavior modification and stroke risk factor reduction, to prevent stroke recurrence. The RN, together with the patient and caregiver will work on Blood pressure reduction, blood glucose control, diet, smoking cessation, and activity among other goals. There is no charge to the patients when being seen by the mobile nurse. The proposed outcomes of these services will be a reduction in readmission and ED visits, reduced work load for primary care, and reduction in blood pressure, blood glucose, cholesterol, weight, smoking, and increased activity in this patient population.