Remote Stroke Support (RSS) service overview

Purpose:  The goal of the RSS service is to extend stroke expertise to outside hospitals, addressing both urgent and non-urgent issues around stroke diagnosis and management.  This also includes an educational component in response to resident questions.  The RSS attending will cover calls from outside HUP from 8 am-1 pm M-F.  There will be no coverage on weekends or holidays. 

Procedures:  The RSS attending must set up the RSS number to forward to their personal number by  8 am of the day they are starting service.   See below for procedures to do this.

Appropriate calls to the RSS attending will come from:

• Any Penn affiliated hospital except HUP, including ED, inpatient, or direct from neurology consultants 
• PAH, PPMC, and HUP Cedar calls will go to RSS attending
• PAH or PPMC residents may call the direct RSS phone line.  In general, all other hospitals should contact the RSS service through the transfer center. 

For all hospitals other than PAH or PPMC, if the immediate information on the call suggests the patients is a telestroke and/or thrombectomy candidate, the covering stroke fellow should be brought into the call by the transfer center and should LEAD THE DISCUSSION AND TRANSFER PROCEDURES with the attending staying on the line to assess their performance and allow for later feedback.  If telestroke is indicated, the stroke fellow should perform this.   The RSS service is not meant to remove these important educational experiences from the fellow, so only under exceptional circumstances should the RSS attending perform the telestroke evaluation alone.

For PAH or PPMC, the attending should use their own discretion in deciding whether to bring the fellow into a 3 way call, taking care to avoid delaying thrombolysis.  It may be appropriate for the attending alone to make recommendations about lytics, then loop the fellow in on a transfer center call if thrombectomy is considered appropriate.

Back up procedures: If the RSS attending is unable to answer a call, the stroke fellow on call should be contacted.

Setting up RSS phone forwarding:

The RSS direct line is 215-349-5594.  This will be set up as a VDN and routed to 1-215-615-5431 for reporting purposes.  215-615-5431  is a “Virtual” number, meaning it is programmed on the HUP phone system but does not appear on any physical phone.  The only way to ensure calls to this number are answered is to have it forwarding to live phone number, in your case, a cell phone.  

To forward to your cell phone:

Dial 1215-615-2520 – you will hear a tone

Enter code: 654321– you will hear dial tone

Enter the Feature Access Code for forwarding: *002

Dial the number you are forwarding, 1215-615-5431, you will hear dial tone.

Dial the cell phone number you are forwarding to: 1215-xxx-xxxx (be sure to include the “1”).  You will hear a confirmation tone.

***  Call 1215-349-5594 to confirm calls are forwarding to your cell phone.

If calls are not forwarding to your cell phone, repeat the steps above.  

NOTE: The RSS line will set to automatically transition to a voicemail message at noon every day, and return to the last forwarding number at 8 am the next morning.  When finishing RSS service, the attending may elect to forward the number to the transfer center if there is concern about receiving in appropriate calls over the weekend.