The clinical benefits of having intensivist expertise in ICUs are well documented in the medical literature.1 Remote management of ICU patients also provides significant clinical benefits to healthcare organizations. These include reductions in patient mortality, reductions in both ICU and post-ICU floor lengths of stay, and a reduction in the number of outliers. A study performed at a 10-bed surgical ICU in an academic-affiliated community hospital determined that with remote monitoring of ICU patients, severity adjusted hospital mortality decreased, on average, by 30 percent, and the incidence of ICU complications decreased by 47 percent. In addition, ICU length of stay decreased by 32 percent.2
1 Pronovost, P.J., Angus, D.C., Dorman, T., et al, Physician Staffing Patterns and Clinical Outcomes in Critically Ill Patients, Journal of the American Medical Association 2002; Vol. 288, No. 17:2151-2162.
2 Rosenfeld, B.A., et al, Intensive Care Unit Telemedicine: Alternative Paradigm for providing Continuous Intensivist Care, Critical Care Medicine. 2000 Dec; 28(12):3945-3946.