Apr 29, 2008 6:44 am US/Eastern
Hospitals Use Faraway Doctors To Monitor Patients
BALTIMORE (AP) ―
Facing a shortage of emergency room physicians, six Maryland hospitals will use doctors in Delaware to monitor intensive care patients electronically, officials said Monday.
In Maryland eCare, an intensivist, or critical care physician, who is stationed at a center in Wilmington, Del., will supervise overnight care for as many as 150 patients. The doctor will also offer guidance to onsite nurses.
The collaborative program, funded by a $3 million grant, is needed, officials say, in rural areas such as southern Maryland, where three of the six hospitals are located.
The program "allows us to provide the same high level of care at 2 in the morning as we provide at 2 in the afternoon," said Maryland eCare Director Marc T. Zubrow. He is also director of critical care medicine at Wilmington's Christiana Care Health System, where the critical care doctors will be based. "It's about crisis prevention rather than crisis response."
Here's how the system works: A video camera and computer terminal are put in a patient's room; they send vital signs, test results and information about patient responsiveness to Wilmington.
There, a doctor and several nurses will see the information and photographs on high-resolution computer monitors.
If command center staff members see the patient's health deteriorating, they can tell nurses to provide medication or tests.
Officials said the electronic program will cut response time during overnight hours in intensive care units, which usually depend upon on-call doctors between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. Zubrow said instead of paging a staff physician and waiting for a return call, the nurse can talk to an intensivist almost immediately.
Christine M. Stefanides is president of Civista Medical Center in La Plata, one of the hospitals involved in the project. "It makes patient care safer and reduces the risk of errors," she said. "It makes nurses, other doctors and patients feel more secure that they're well cared for."
The technology, called eICU, was developed by Baltimore-based Visicu, a medical technology company, and is used in about 200 hospitals across the country. Sentara Healthcare in Roanoke, Va., was the first hospital to use the system, and Inova Fairfax Hospital was also an early adopter.
Maryland's eCare program will serve 71 patient beds in six hospitals by 2010, officials said, and at least four other hospitals are thinking about participating. The Washington area hospitals are Civista, Calvert Memorial Hospital in Prince Frederick and St. Mary's Hospital in Leonardtown.
Other participants include Peninsula Regional Medical Center and Atlantic General Hospital on the Eastern Shore and Washington County Health System in Western Maryland.
James Xinis is president of Calvert Memorial Hospital. He said Maryland eCare would not do away with the need for onsite medical personnel, but would help them with decision making and allow them time off at night.
The command center in Wilmington will run between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. weekdays and around the clock on weekends and holidays.
"This raises the level of care available locally," Xinis said. "Other hospitals who have used similar programs show a decrease in mortality rates by as much as 25 percent."
(© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
Click to enlarge
Stumble It!
