- What services does Advanced ICU Care provide?
Advanced ICU Care offers comprehensive tele-ICU programs and consulting services, with a proven track record of improving the clinical, financial and operational performance of its hospital partners. As the nation’s largest independent tele-ICU provider, Advanced ICU Care has successfully implemented and managed more programs than any other organization. Our best-in-class programs combine experienced intensivist-led care teams, sophisticated telemedicine technology and a rigorous focus on evidence-based best practices to improve patient care and safety. Our consulting team brings insights gained from decades of nationally recognized ICU leadership and expertise in both bedside ICU and tele-ICU environments.
- Why was Advanced ICU Care formed?
Advanced ICU Care was formed to improve the quality of care in the intensive care unit and address the challenges associated with the current and growing shortage of intensivist physicians.
- What is the Advanced ICU Care tele-ICU program?
The Advanced ICU Care tele-ICU program combines experienced, intensivist-led care teams with telemedicine technology and a continuous process improvement program to drive the highest level of care in the ICU. Our programs provide 24/7 monitoring of ICU patients by an intensivist-led care team with a rigorous focus on best practices.
- How does the Advanced ICU Care tele-ICU program actually work?
The Advanced ICU Care intensivist physicians operate from a centralized location where they constantly monitor patient data, including vital signs, medications, labs, and clinical status. Because the proactive data management tools identify problems before they become urgent, the Advanced ICU Care team can work alongside hospital staff to address situations immediately, before complications develop. The team also uses two-way video to enable face-to-face consultations between them and the bedside physicians and nurses day or night. Advanced ICU Care’s unique analytics and collaborative structured process continually measure the ICUs performance, ensuring best practices are consistently achieved for optimal patient care, fewer complications, and better patient safety.
- What are the benefits for patients?
With Advanced ICU Care, patients receive the highest level of care recommended for U.S. hospitals today: 24/7/365 monitoring by highly trained, experienced intensivist physicians. Advanced ICU Care’s experienced critical care team constantly monitors the patient’s condition using data management tools that identify problems before they become urgent. This added layer of care improves patient safety and results in improved patient outcomes.
- What are the benefits for bedside physicians?
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With Advanced ICU Care, bedside physicians have an on-call partner that ensures emerging issues are dealt with immediately. Physicians can be confident that calls and crises will be significantly reduced, giving them more time for their outpatient practice and other pursuits. Advanced ICU Care’s tele-ICU solution means that their sickest patients are vigilantly monitored when they are not present. The Advanced ICU Care intensivist-led care team is connected with each patient at the bedside, working around-the-clock, complementing the care plans that the bedside physician sets in motion and collaborating to provide 24/7/365 intensivist coverage that is the recommended best practice in the ICU today.
Because Advanced ICU Care collaborates with doctors and the hospital critical care team on their continuous process improvement initiatives, physicians can feel reassured that their patients are receiving the highest recommended level of care, with less —not more — time demanded from them. These benefits come with no financial cost or loss of revenue. The physician’s billings for ICU patients do not change and consultative preferences are respected.
- What are the benefits for critical care nurses?
With Advanced ICU Care, critical care nurses now have an experienced intensivist available to them 24/7. Nurses are relieved of the stress that accompanies the need to contact a doctor when one is not available. The nurses’ team now includes additional critical care nurses and physicians to help them deliver the best practice standards they want each of their patients to have. Their input is heard and valued as Advanced ICU Care collaborates with the nursing team on important process improvement initiatives. Critical care nurses are an integral part of the ICU team.
- What is telemedicine?
Telemedicine is the use of medical information exchanged from one site to another via electronic communications to improve patients' health status. Closely associated with telemedicine is the term "telehealth," which is often used to encompass a broader definition of remote healthcare that does not always involve clinical services. Videoconferencing, transmission of still images, e-health including patient portals, remote monitoring of vital signs, continuing medical education and nursing call centers are all considered part of telemedicine and telehealth.
- What is a tele-ICU?
A tele-ICU is a care model that uses sophisticated telemedicine technology to allow a remote care team to continuously monitor patients in a hospital's ICU.
- What is an intensivist?
- Intensivists are board-certified critical care physicians who have received specialized training in critical care medicine, the care of ICU patients.
- What is an ICU?
- An Intensive Care Unit (ICU) is a hospital unit that has special equipment and specially trained personnel for the care of seriously ill patients requiring immediate and continuous attention.
- What quality improvement has been achieved by hospitals that have implemented a tele-ICU?
It is clear from the medical literature that 24/7 monitoring of patients by intensivists in the ICU results in better patient care and lower mortality. However, less than 20 percent of hospitals have intensivists providing around-the-clock coverage. The study "Updating the Leapfrog Group Intensive Care Unit Physician Staffing Standard" found that more than 54,000 ICU deaths per year could be avoided in the ICU if intensivists were consistently monitoring patients in every ICU. Other studies published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and conducted by the New England Healthcare Institute found that ICU patients have lower risks of death and shorter ICU and hospital stays when continuously monitored by a tele-ICU.
- Will the Advanced ICU Care program make a hospital Leapfrog compliant?
Implementing the Advanced ICU Care program may enable your hospital to become Leapfrog compliant. Hospitals that use intensivists via telemedicine achieve partial recognition by The Leapfrog Group and, depending on the additional ICU resources, may achieve full compliance.