HCA Midwest Health, Kansas City’s leading healthcare provider and award-winning leader in stroke care, recently announced that Angie Lucchi has been appointed as Division Vice President of Outreach and Telemedicine.

In this role, Lucchi will continue to develop strategy and strategic initiatives for HCA Midwest Health’s robust outreach and telemedicine initiatives, connecting rural healthcare partners with better and immediate access to specialized care. The HCA Midwest Health TeleStroke Network represents HCA Midwest Health partner hospitals, including Research Medical Center, Overland Park Regional Medical Center and Centerpoint Medical Center. Through awards and accreditations, such as Research’s Comprehensive Stroke Center designation, as well as the Certified Primary Stroke Center designation locations, these hospitals have specialized resources including board-certified expert neurologists, neuroradiologists and surgeons and are dedicated to best practices that deliver the highest quality and timely stroke care treatment.

Lucchi, who began her career with HCA Midwest Health to the AVP of Outreach and Telemedicine in 2016 at the Division office of HCA Midwest Health. During that period, her focused efforts helped HCA Midwest Health experience tremendous growth in outreach, establishing new relationships with rural markets in Kansas and Missouri and HCA Midwest Health hospitals in Louisiana and Mississippi. Lucchi has been responsible for the creation and implementation of the HCA Midwest Health Outreach and Virtual Network, which consists of 46 virtual network locations in Kansas, Missouri, Louisiana and Mississippi, including four current telemedicine service lines with more scheduled to launch in 2018 and beyond.

In the past nine months alone, Lucchi has helped add 17 new telemedicine and outreach sites as part of the network, allowing partner hospitals 24-hour, on-call access to leading stroke, neuroscience and other specialty consults. In addition, she implemented key service lines, such as oncology and neurology, in outreach outpatient clinics to allow patients to remain in their community and receive consults from specialists at Sarah Cannon Cancer Centers and boardcertified neurologists.

“Angie’s leadership, in collaboration with Division and hospital leadership, is instrumental in building our outreach program,” says HCA Midwest Health President M.L. Lagarde III. “Our Virtual Health Network, where physicians at rural hospitals can communicate via a two-way live video-, audio- and image-sharing system with stroke neurologists and specialists from their respective HCA Midwest Health partner hospital, helps pave the way for life-saving patient care to our important community partners.”

“The technology and expertise provided by HCA Midwest Health’s Virtual Health Network helps patients in rural communities receive care much faster and ensures they have a seamless transfer for high-acuity stroke, brain injury care and other time critical diagnoses,” Lucchi says. “These partnerships enabled our valued specialists to evaluate a patient in real time to diagnose a stroke and other time critical assessments. The consulting specialty physicians collaborate with local physicians and staff to determine the best treatment options. The ultimate goal of the program is to keep more patients, if at all possible, in their local facility to receive care with the Virtual Health specialists and their care team in the outreach facility.”

For more information on HCA Midwest Health, visit https://hcamidwest.com/home/.