WUFT | News and public media for north central Florida
The Mobile Stroke Treatment Unit expedites life-saving care in two years since opening
By Tanya Fedak
April 15, 2025 at 12:43 PM EDT
https://youtu.be/VI4B3hABWNA
When Cheryl Hamrick woke up in the middle of the night, she didn’t know what time it was. It was the awful pain radiating from the right side of the back of her head that was at the forefront of her mind.
The 77-year-old said she felt something go “pop” in that area. She didn’t do anything about it at first, so she laid back down. She didn’t even think of going to the doctor until later that morning, when her house-cleaner and daughter encouraged her to go.
When she got to UF Health Shands Hospital, they told her she had a stroke. If she continued to ignore her symptoms, she could be dead.
“I didn’t have enough sense to think ‘stroke’ at that time,” Hamrick said.
About a month later, Hamrick is still recovering. Speech impairment and poor handwriting are two of the lingering side-effects, and she now has to use a walker or be pushed in a wheelchair.
While Hamrick’s stroke continues to affect her daily life, the Mobile Stroke Treatment Unit works to minimize long-term impairments like hers by providing prompt, on-site care that targets the early stages of a stroke. By administering clot-busting medications and neurology consultations before even arriving at the hospital, the MSTU improves patient outcomes and decreases long-term deficits, avoiding the prolonged recovery Hamrick now faces.
Originally established in July 2023, the Mobile Stroke Treatment Unit was designed to expedite the process of giving care to people suffering from a stroke. The MSTU brings the hospital to the patient, and on the truck is a portable CT scanner, telemedicine equipment and medications needed to treat a stroke.
The unit is staffed in collaboration with Alachua County Fire Rescue, and a registered nurse, CT technologist, paramedic and an EMT are physically present on the truck, along with a board-certified vascular neurologist available via telemedicine.
The MSTU has now expanded to rendezvous with 11 surrounding counties. Nicolle Davis, the director of the MSTU, said in the two years the program has been established, the team has increased the rate of patients returning directly home after being discharged by 30%, decreased the length of hospital stay by two days and has decreased mortality by 45%.
“Less than 2% of patients are treated within the ‘golden hour,’ which is from symptom onset to treatment,” she said. “On our Mobile Stroke Treatment Unit, we’re able to give IV clot-busting meds 26% of the time.”
The unit has seen great success stories since its inception, she said, but one that stands out is a patient from Putnam County who was experiencing a large vessel occlusion stroke. The team delivered clot-busting medication on the truck and called ahead to neurosurgery. When they got to the hospital, the patient went directly to the operating room, where the operating room and neurosurgery teams were waiting.
By bypassing the emergency room, the clot causing the stroke was able to be mechanically removed quicker than it otherwise would have. The patient was under medical care for a total of only 24 hours. He went home with no stroke symptoms.
“On our truck, he had severe disabilities,” Davis said. “He would have been in a nursing home or some sort of facility for the rest of his life if he hadn’t been treated, and he woke up in our neuro ICU an hour later, completely intact, no deficits.”
The patient asked for two large pizzas, Davis said, and he went home the next day.
Treating the stroke timely is essential to recovery. David Lykens, the Alachua County Fire Rescue EMS special operations captain, said every minute a person is experiencing a stroke, almost 2 million brain cells die and do not regenerate. By getting treatment within the first hour of symptom onset, the chances of recovery increase. The Mobile Stroke Unit has been able to provide care for patients within that time frame almost two times more than by standard EMS, Lykens said.
He has worked with the MSTU since it started in 2023 and said education among the community and the unit’s staff alike helped lead it to its success.
“We are a community asset and not just going out and running calls, but also educating the public and educating EMS providers on what a stroke is and how to treat it,” Lykens said.
As the team works to educate people on the disease, the community is also simultaneously becoming more aware of what the MSTU can accomplish. Anna Khanna, the MSTU medical director, said there was initially a lot of skepticism when trying to convince the public and other EMS agencies this process works.
Khana said some people would question how much of a difference the MSTU could make if they were dispatched right next to a hospital, where they could just be taken to instead. Would those five minutes even matter?
The MSTU proved they do.
“When a patient rolls in [to the hospital], you will take them to the CT scanner, which is a little bit of a distance away,” Khana said. “Then, you go someplace else. You got to get the medication, you got to mix the drug. We have an expert team that is doing this entire process simultaneously, so we’re able to treat much quicker.”
Since the program started, the MSTU has responded to over 1,400 calls, admitted over 700 patients to the truck and has given over 175 critical interventions, Khana said. After each case, the team likes to debrief and discuss how they could do things better and in a more expedited way, which allows them to develop new algorithms and pathways.
“The most rewarding aspect is when a patient comes in to us with stroke symptoms, and some of them could be devastating symptoms,” she said. “Then, they go home completely independent, and they’re able to return to their families — able to return to society, and I think that’s the most rewarding part.”
Two new Mobile Stroke Treatment Units will be added this year in Jacksonville and The Villages.
When Cheryl Hamrick woke up in the middle of the night, she didn’t know what time it was. It was the awful pain radiating from the right side of the back of her head that was at the forefront of her mind.
The 77-year-old said she felt something go “pop” in that area. She didn’t do anything about it at first, so she laid back down. She didn’t even think of going to the doctor until later that morning, when her house-cleaner and daughter encouraged her to go.
When she got to UF Health Shands Hospital, they told her she had a stroke. If she continued to ignore her symptoms, she could be dead.
“I didn’t have enough sense to think ‘stroke’ at that time,” Hamrick said.
About a month later, Hamrick is still recovering. Speech impairment and poor handwriting are two of the lingering side-effects, and she now has to use a walker or be pushed in a wheelchair.
While Hamrick’s stroke continues to affect her daily life, the Mobile Stroke Treatment Unit works to minimize long-term impairments like hers by providing prompt, on-site care that targets the early stages of a stroke. By administering clot-busting medications and neurology consultations before even arriving at the hospital, the MSTU improves patient outcomes and decreases long-term deficits, avoiding the prolonged recovery Hamrick now faces.
Originally established in July 2023, the Mobile Stroke Treatment Unit was designed to expedite the process of giving care to people suffering from a stroke. The MSTU brings the hospital to the patient, and on the truck is a portable CT scanner, telemedicine equipment and medications needed to treat a stroke.
The unit is staffed in collaboration with Alachua County Fire Rescue, and a registered nurse, CT technologist, paramedic and an EMT are physically present on the truck, along with a board-certified vascular neurologist available via telemedicine.
The MSTU has now expanded to rendezvous with 11 surrounding counties. Nicolle Davis, the director of the MSTU, said in the two years the program has been established, the team has increased the rate of patients returning directly home after being discharged by 30%, decreased the length of hospital stay by two days and has decreased mortality by 45%.
“Less than 2% of patients are treated within the ‘golden hour,’ which is from symptom onset to treatment,” she said. “On our Mobile Stroke Treatment Unit, we’re able to give IV clot-busting meds 26% of the time.”
The unit has seen great success stories since its inception, she said, but one that stands out is a patient from Putnam County who was experiencing a large vessel occlusion stroke. The team delivered clot-busting medication on the truck and called ahead to neurosurgery. When they got to the hospital, the patient went directly to the operating room, where the operating room and neurosurgery teams were waiting.
By bypassing the emergency room, the clot causing the stroke was able to be mechanically removed quicker than it otherwise would have. The patient was under medical care for a total of only 24 hours. He went home with no stroke symptoms.
“On our truck, he had severe disabilities,” Davis said. “He would have been in a nursing home or some sort of facility for the rest of his life if he hadn’t been treated, and he woke up in our neuro ICU an hour later, completely intact, no deficits.”
The patient asked for two large pizzas, Davis said, and he went home the next day.
Treating the stroke timely is essential to recovery. David Lykens, the Alachua County Fire Rescue EMS special operations captain, said every minute a person is experiencing a stroke, almost 2 million brain cells die and do not regenerate. By getting treatment within the first hour of symptom onset, the chances of recovery increase. The Mobile Stroke Unit has been able to provide care for patients within that time frame almost two times more than by standard EMS, Lykens said.
He has worked with the MSTU since it started in 2023 and said education among the community and the unit’s staff alike helped lead it to its success.
“We are a community asset and not just going out and running calls, but also educating the public and educating EMS providers on what a stroke is and how to treat it,” Lykens said.
As the team works to educate people on the disease, the community is also simultaneously becoming more aware of what the MSTU can accomplish. Anna Khanna, the MSTU medical director, said there was initially a lot of skepticism when trying to convince the public and other EMS agencies this process works.
Khana said some people would question how much of a difference the MSTU could make if they were dispatched right next to a hospital, where they could just be taken to instead. Would those five minutes even matter?
The MSTU proved they do.
“When a patient rolls in [to the hospital], you will take them to the CT scanner, which is a little bit of a distance away,” Khana said. “Then, you go someplace else. You got to get the medication, you got to mix the drug. We have an expert team that is doing this entire process simultaneously, so we’re able to treat much quicker.”
Since the program started, the MSTU has responded to over 1,400 calls, admitted over 700 patients to the truck and has given over 175 critical interventions, Khana said. After each case, the team likes to debrief and discuss how they could do things better and in a more expedited way, which allows them to develop new algorithms and pathways.
“The most rewarding aspect is when a patient comes in to us with stroke symptoms, and some of them could be devastating symptoms,” she said. “Then, they go home completely independent, and they’re able to return to their families — able to return to society, and I think that’s the most rewarding part.”
Two new Mobile Stroke Treatment Units will be added this year in Jacksonville and The Villages.