Abstract WP270: Outcomes of Telestroke tPA Patients Who Stay at Community Hospitals vs Transfer to a Comprehensive Stroke Center

Introduction: Telemedicine (TM) is increasingly utilized for tPA delivery. The destination of the patient after tPA, whether to stay at the presenting hospital or transfer to a hub stroke center, is unclear. A prior US study showed that TM tPA treated patients who stayed at their presenting hospital had longer length of stay (LOS), worse discharge dispositions (DD), and an increased in-hospital mortality (IHM). We did a similar analysis to assess reproducibility in our TM network. Objective: We hypothesized that there would be no difference in LOS, IHM, and discharge disposition (DD) between drip and stay (DST) and drip and hub transfer (DSH) in our network. Methods: We identified patients treated with tPA at of one our 19 spoke hospitals between 9/2015 and 12/2016. Demographic, clinical, and outcome data were obtained from our TM registry. We compared characteristics of DST and DSH patients using univariate analyses including student t-test, Wilcoxon sum rank, or chi square analyses where appropriate. We...