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ST. LOUIS (August 22, 2007) – Advanced ICU Care®, a company that connects critical care medicine physicians (intensivists) and nurses to hospital intensive care units via telemedicine, announced today that it has partnered with Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise, Idaho to provide 24/7 monitoring for the hospitals’ ICU patients, in collaboration with Saint Alphonsus’ local medical and nursing staffs.
Saint Alphonsus will begin using Advanced ICU Care’s eICU® program later this year to help support the hospital’s intensive care unit. The unit will open with 22 beds, with the ability to grow to 32. The eICU program allows Advanced ICU Care’s intensivists and critical care nurses ― located at the company’s Operations Center in St. Louis, MO ― to care for patients from afar using clinical management software combined with patient data and video capabilities. Saint Alphonsus also plans to extend these capabilities to hospitals throughout Idaho ― leveraging telemedicine to extend clinical expertise, provide greater access to highly specialized care and technologies, and offer an expanded network of clinical services.
Advanced ICU Care intensivists and critical care nurses will provide continuous remote care and monitoring for patients seven days a week, 24 hours a day, supporting the local intensivist and critical care nursing teams who staff the ICU day and night. They will also assist with operating the hospital’s InTouch remote presence robotic systems, which will be in place at Saint Alphonsus and other community hospitals to help improve access to specialty care and state-of-the art technologies, as well as enhance the quality of care. The robotic systems will allow Advanced ICU Care’s intensivists to help round on critically ill patients, speak with family members and consult with the local medical staff.
Through a TATRC (Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center) grant, Saint Alphonsus will use telemedicine to deliver different types of specialists, including intensivists, to hospitals in the greater community.
“We are excited to explore all the possibilities of using this quality-driven technology to enable us to expand the expertise of intensivists throughout the rural states of Idaho and Oregon,” said Michael J. Ward CHE, executive director, corporate development at Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center. “We look forward to working with such a high-quality medical service company as Advanced ICU Care has proven to be. This is a great example of private and government sectors working together to improve the quality and efficiencies of healthcare in our communities.”
“Saint Alphonsus has continued to focus on applying innovative technologies to deliver the best possible care, and we look forward to our collaboration with the hospital and our partnership with the local intensivists, pulmonologists and nursing staff to provide the highest level of care and safety for patients in the ICU,” said Mary Jo Gorman, MD, MBA, chief executive officer of Advanced ICU Care. “We admire the hospital’s ongoing efforts to expand access to specialized care to patients both within and outside the hospital,” she added.
Advanced ICU Care’s eICU program, which will be in place in eight hospitals throughout the U.S., greatly improves patient care and safety in the ICU. One hospital noted a 24% reduction in patient mortality after using the eICU program for one year, while cardiac arrests dropped nearly 70%. The program also helps deliver best practice standards and continuous process improvement in the ICU and across the continuum of care.
In more rural communities, the eICU program is also being used to help leverage scarce critical care resources. With just 6,000 intensivists in the U.S., demand for intensivists is expected to outstrip supply, and this shortfall is projected to worsen given the aging U.S. population.
About Advanced ICU Care
Advanced ICU Care® is a medical service company that provides high-quality remote critical care to patients in the intensive care units (ICU) of community hospitals. Through experienced clinicians, supported by cutting-edge telemedicine technology, and a process improvement program, Advanced ICU Care provides continuous ICU patient monitoring and improved care and safety outcomes to critically ill patients across the country. Hospital ICUs are linked with Advanced ICU Care’s eICU® Operations Center in St. Louis, Missouri through a technology platform developed by VISICU, allowing Advanced ICU Care’s board-certified intensivists (critical care medicine physicians) and critical care nurses to monitor hospital ICU patients from a central location. Founded to improve access to critical care expertise, deliver best practices to patients by leveraging telemedicine technology, and establish intensivists as the standard of care, the Advanced ICU Care program delivers around-the-clock critical care specialists, dramatically improving patient care. For more information, visit: www.icumedicine.com.
About Saint Alphonsus
Saint Alphonsus is a 365-licensed bed regional medical center serving people throughout the Northwest. Saint Alphonsus emphasizes care that is patient-centered, innovative and community based. Saint Alphonsus focuses on providing services in a spiritual, healing environment, and is renowned for its state-of-the-art digital environment and pioneering technologies; award-winning clinical services; a nationally accredited Life Flight program and the region’s Trauma Center. For more information, visit: www.saintalphonsus.org.
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