Transforming Emergency Response Activations with Hypercare

Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH) in Ontario, Canada, a leading regional hospital, sought to enhance its emergency response capabilities across multiple critical scenarios, including Code STEMI, Code Blue, Code Stroke, Life and Limb activations, and other urgent activations. In 2021, RVH implemented Hypercare to streamline communication, reduce emergency code activation delays, and improve patient outcomes. Hypercare has significantly strengthened the hospital’s ability to coordinate life-saving interventions across multiple departments.

Challenge: The Need for a Faster, More Reliable Code STEMI Activation

Door-to-Balloon time means everything during a ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction (STEMI). Rapid, coordinated intervention makes all the difference in minimizing heart damage. Prior to Hypercare, RVH relied on a traditional switchboard system to manually page interventional cardiology teams. This process was prone to delays, as switchboard operators had to locate the correct on-call providers, page them, and wait for a response. Additionally, securely transmitting ECGs to interventional cardiologists was difficult, impeding rapid decision-making.

To account for the growing and aging population in the catchment area, RVH had planned to implement a phased approach to bringing advanced cardiac care to the region 24/7. In order to do this and maintain high quality care, RVH needed a solution to improve their communications and code team activations.

Hypercare’s Solution: Automating and Optimizing STEMI Activations

To address these challenges, RVH partnered with Hypercare to implement a real-time, automated emergency response system. Key improvements included:

• Automated and immediate Code STEMI alerts – with a single trigger, Hypercare instantly notifies the entire STEMI team, overriding silent and do-not-disturb settings to ensure immediate response.
• Integrated real-time scheduling – Hypercare became the primary scheduling platform for the entire hospital, including interventional cardiology, ensuring the switchboard always had up-to-date on-call information, reducing the errors that came with manual transcription.
• Dedicated STEMI & consult hotlines – regional hospitals and emergency departments can now directly contact the on-call interventional cardiologist via a dedicated Hypercare hotline, ensuring urgent consultations happen without delay.
• Escalation mechanisms – if a team member does not acknowledge an alert, Hypercare automatically re-alerts them and escalates notifications to a call to ensure there are no delays in mobilizing the code team.
• Secure ECG transmission – team members are able to instantly and securely transmit ECGs and patient information, enabling interventional cardiologists to assess cases remotely. Paramedics conducting ECGs in the field through Hypercare’s Zoll integration, will automatically send an ECG to the on-call cardiologist prior to patient arrival allowing for identification of a STEMI and a more detailed understanding of the type of case.
• Streamlined patient registration – easy sharing of patient demographics speeds up the administrative steps required to get the patient to definitive management.
  

Outcome: Faster Response Times and Improved Patient Outcomes

Hypercare’s seamless integration at RVH has delivered tangible improvements:

• Reduced emergency code activation time – by immediately mobilizing the right code teams, delays were reduced, shortening time to treatment.
• Enhanced decision-making – the ability to share ECGs and patient details in real time, has enabled faster, more informed decisions and interventions.
• Operational efficiency – automated scheduling and alerts have reduced administrative overhead and improved workflow reliability.

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“Activating a STEMI is now seamless. We no longer wait for pages to be returned—the entire team is alerted instantly. The faster we mobilize, the sooner we can open the artery, directly improving patient outcomes.”

— Dr. Mark Kotowycz, Interventional Cardiologist & Medical Director, Cardiac Intervention Unit, RVH

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RVH’s implementation of Hypercare demonstrates the power of real-time communication in high-stakes emergencies. By eliminating activation delays, ensuring immediate communication, and enhancing coordination, Hypercare is setting a new standard for emergency medical response.

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Interested in accelerating emergency code activations at your hospital?
Learn more about Hypercare’s proven impact. Get in touch here.