COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO)–A new mobile health unit has arrived in the Pikes Peak region.
On Wednesday, February 14, UChealth unveiled its new mobile stroke treatment unit. The new ambulance is meant to help treat patients wherever and whenever they are showing signs of a stroke or having one. There are about 30 mobile stroke units across the United States and two of them are now in Colorado.
In the past, the original unit was shared by health professionals in Aurora and Colorado Springs, but now residents will have one here permanently.
“What we anticipate is that we are going to now be able to treat twice as many patients per year as we were in the past,” said David Ornelas, Nurse Manager for the Mobile Stroke Unit. Ornelas said between 2016 and 2023 the original mobile stroke unit helped treat more than 5,000 patients in Colorado Springs and Aurora.
“What we hope to see is not only will we be arriving on time a lot more but that we are going to be utilized a lot more, a lot of the problems we were running into is that our EMS colleagues were getting confused whether or not we were in service not in service in the springs or in Aurora,” said Ornelas.