Becker's Hospital Review

Executive Briefing: Intensive Care Services 37 Sponsored by: Up Your ICU Management Game with a Tele-ICU Program By Ellie Rizzo T he demand for intensive care services is rising. This doesn't come as a surprise; the physician shortage has been predicted for some time now, and intensivists are no exception to the trend. For hospitals, dealing with care shortages while maintaining excellent standards of care is not easy. Indeed, intensive care suffers from many of the same management problems facing the rest of medicine; the Leapfrog Group estimates that various factors, including inadequate staffing and sub-par management contribute to approximately 55,000 preventable deaths in intensive care units in the U.S. each year. Bridging the care gap in the ICU is particularly important, largely because of the department's cost and widespread clinical impact. About 40 cents of every dollar spent on operations in a hospital is spent in the ICU. This statistic comes with an additional problem: Adults 65 and over use the ICU three times as often as those under 65, which, with the growing baby boomer population, means the ICU is becoming more resource-intensive than ever. When to Consider a Tele-ICU Program for Your Hospital • ntensivist shortages I • Quality of service • ICU efficiency • ompetitive positioning C According to Mary Jo Gorman, MD, CEO of Advanced ICU Care®, the nation's largest provider of tele-ICU services, technology plays a helpful role in enabling care improvements in intensive care. In particular, telemedicine bridges the gap between the need for services and the shortage of the people to deliver those services. Dr. Gorman and her team have been working to build these bridges through the company's tele-ICU solution. Telemedicine has gained popularity in recent years because of its usefulness in cost savings and care quality. A 2013 study in CHEST Journal confirmed the benefits of ICU telemedicine. The 120,000-patient study showed telemedicine in the ICU is associated with shorter lengths of stay, lower mortality rates, faster case review, better use of performance data and improved adherence to best practices. To Dr. Gorman, this is no surprise. "The big difference between ICU telehealth and other types of telehealth is that ICU patients are extremely fragile. [An ICU] must have information available second to second and have staff available in minutes. This is very different than in a program in which you have some time. Delivering successful care to an ICU patient has quite a different rigor," she says. The Advanced ICU Care program helps meet this need for rigor through a team of centrally located critical care experts and clinicians who have patient information at their fingertips at all times. The team is constantly monitoring patients' vital signs, medications, labs, trends in patients' clinical status and outcomes of care, and it supplements the hospitals' delivery of care at any time, day or night, as a patient's condition changes. The Advanced ICU Care program has a robust implementation process, and electronic medical records and laboratory data are both connected, allowing collaborative virtual and real-time interactions between clinicians, patients and families. (continued on pg. 39) About 40 cents of every dollar spent on operations in a hospital is spent in the ICU. Adults 65 and over use the ICU three times as often as those under 65.

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