Hypercare mobilizes vascular team during ‘Life and Limb’ emergencies

BARRIE, ONT. – Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH), in Barrie, Ont., recently completed a one-year pilot for their Vascular Life and Limb team activations using Hypercare (www.hypercare.com) – an advanced clinical communication and coordination solution that can send out alerts to the entire clinical response team when a patient presents at hospital with life threatening vascular conditions.

RVH had used Hypercare for a successful deployment for its Code STEMI activations, just four years prior. Its effectiveness in coordinating the urgent transfer of cardiac patients made Hypercare the logical decision for life and limb threatening situations.

“Life and limb activations involve a highly coordinated and urgent response during a medical emergency,” said Andrew Bell, director, Emergency Management, Safety and Security. “First, a physician [in the community] determines if a patient’s life is at risk, or whether there’s a risk of loss of limb, and quickly consults with CritiCall Ontario.”

CritiCall then coordinates the transport of a patient to the nearest hospital capable of providing the necessary clinical services. Next, a stat message goes out to a vascular surgeon and a consult is requested. If the clinical criteria are met, the hospital brings in the patient on a priority, non-refusal basis ensuring they receive whatever care is needed.

The final step is to gather the on-call surgical team with just a single tap via Hypercare. This includes a full complement of support staff, surgical nurses, recovery nurses, and vascular surgeons.

If all goes according to plan, these steps reduce the amount of time it takes to get a patient to hospital and to gather the team together, all in one place.

“Before Hypercare, we called everyone individually by phone, and that could take upwards of 15 minutes,” said Bell. “Hypercare can send out a secure message on their group chat to the entire team – all at once. Even if someone’s phone is ‘silent’, Hypercare can break through those settings.”

Life and limb activations include persons with vascular emergencies, a birthing mother with threat to her newborn, or any emergency condition that brings a patient to hospital with risk of loss of life or limb.

Significantly, RVH averages one or more life and limb activations every day throughout the year.

Before Hypercare, when members of the vascular team were notified individually by phone, not only was the method slow and cumbersome, but some members of the on-call team could be overlooked.

With Hypercare, the process is automated – all members of a team are alerted at the same time, saving significant time and coordination, and ultimately ensuring the patient receives care as fast as possible.

As time is of the essence, the speed of Hypercare’s technology can be lifesaving.

Moreover, if a team member doesn’t respond, Hypercare’s automated escalation pathways will retry alternative contact methods if the initial alert isn’t acknowledged.

“During our one-year pilot, we reduced hospital acceptance time as a consulting hospital, from 15 minutes to within 10-minutes with a consulting physician,” said Bell.

He added, “Since adopting Hypercare, our reject or accept times have been cut almost in half from 38 minutes in 2023 to just under 21 minutes in 2025,” said Bell.

For vascular emergencies, they’re moving 20-minutes faster, greatly improving patient outcomes.

“Streamlining our CritiCall after-hours emergency pathway has reduced response times and accelerated transfers for life- and limb-threatening vascular emergencies – ensuring patients receive specialized care faster when every minute matters,” said Dr. Joel Cooper, vascular surgeon, Royal Victoria Hospital.

Code STEMI activations used to be a challenge to coordinate effectively. Members of the health team were contacted individually by phone. “It was an arduous process, slow and prone to delays. The longer it takes to assemble the clinical care team, the higher the risk to the patient,” Bell explained. “But with Hypercare, there’s no comparison – Hypercare works quickly and saves lives.”

There are other use cases RVH may – at some point – investigate, such as staffing alerts to Resource Nurses and surge notifications to physicians.