Doctors (in DE) to Monitor ICU Patients (in MD) Electronically

[MountainLaurel]

Six Maryland hospitals facing a shortage of emergency room doctors plan to use physicians in Delaware to electronically monitor intensive care patients, officials announced yesterday.

Under the program known as Maryland eCare, a critical care doctor, or intensivist, based at a command center in Wilmington will oversee overnight care for as many as 150 patients and provide guidance to on-site nurses. Officials said the collaboration with the hospitals, the first of its kind in the nation, is needed, especially in exurban and rural areas. Three of the six hospitals are in Southern Maryland.

The program, funded with a $3 million grant, "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, 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."

A video camera and computer terminal positioned in a patient's room will send vital signs, test results and information about patient responsiveness to Wilmington, where a doctor and several nurses will view the data and photographs on high-resolution computer monitors.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/28/AR2008042801225.html

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Versus doctors physically doing rounds?

For the ICU??!!! Are they DRUNK??!!

[MountainLaurel]

2. Well, they will have nurses on site

Can any folks with a medical background toss in their opinions?

[cosmik debris]

3. Telemedicine is a great way to provide quality care

to people who don't have physical access to specialists.

Officials said the electronic program will drastically reduce response time during overnight hours in intensive care units, which generally rely on on-call doctors between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. Instead of paging a staff physician and losing time waiting for a return call, the nurse can talk to an intensivist almost immediately, Zubrow said.

The only thing that is different here is the distance between the monitor and the patient, not the distance between the care giver and the patient. And since some hospitals employ "monitor techs" whose sole job is to watch monitors and call the Dr. if anything is amiss, this is nothing new.

Hospital officials said the collaboration was formed in response to drastic shortages of critical care doctors. There are currently 6,000 intensivists in Maryland, Zubrow said, compared with a projected need of 35,000 in the next 12 years.

I have to wonder if the critics of this program have a better plan?

[Crunchy Frog]

8. Train and hire more doctors?

[cosmik debris]

9. And Capitalism comes along and kicks you in the crotch.

It is cheaper to find more economical ways to use the doctors we have than to train and hire new ones.

While your idea makes a lot of sense, it doesn't return a short term profit.

Every one wants to cut health care costs, the capitalists want that most of all.

[WildClarySage]

4. I just wonder how long before these doctors are located

in India.

[cosmik debris]

5. It is already happening

X-rays and ultrasound images are frequently read by radiologists and cardiologists in India. It has been going on for years.

Once the information is converted to digital images and posted on a web site, it can be interpreted by any one anywhere in the world.

We are no longer limited by the quality of medicine available locally. For some of us, that is a good thing.

[Horse with no Name]

7. Horror story that happened a few months ago

Had a trauma patient come in with multiple injuries.
Ended up having total body scans...had some serious facial injuries.
It took SIX HOURS to have the off-site radiologist read them.
Six hours.
It was six hours before they knew the extent of a trauma patients injuries.
That is NOT a good system.

[Horse with no Name]

6. Not all hospitals have intensivists on staff

Most don't have physicians in the ICU at all hours.
This looks to be a great pilot program for the smaller hospitals.
It adds an additional layer of patient care.