White River Medical Center’s (WRMC) critical care staff recently attended the “2016 Baptist Health eICU Care Collaborative Conference” held in Little Rock to discuss the topic “Partnering with You for Improved Patient Care”. The conference participants discussed how telehealth services can improve patient access to care especially for gravely ill patients.
Keynoter Wendy Delbert RN and CEO and Founder of The VirtualEngine, LLC, worked at Mercy Hospital www.mercy.net as Vice President for Telehealth Services. During her time at Mercy, she developed a telehealth team and converted more than 500 critical care beds to eICU technology at 15 plus hospitals across five states.
She launched 30 telestroke site programs, developed a telesepsis program to monitor over 3,000 beds and created the first eAcute and eHospitalist programs across three hospitals. As part of the transformation of care at Mercy, she led the design of the world’s first virtual care center in Missouri.
Three years ago, WRMC partnered with Baptist Health www.baptist-health.com to give their patients an additional team of specialists to keep watch over patients in the eICU 24/7. Now WRMC has two critical care rooms using eICU technology equipped with a camera, microphone, and speaker. This enables the staff, WRMC caregivers, and patients to communicate with each other in real-time.
Staffed round-the-clock 365 days a year, the Baptist Health eICU care clinical operations hub located in Little Rock helps rural hospitals provide state-of-the-art intensive care to the sickest patients.
At another conference in Missouri, the Tele-Critical Care (TCC) Summit was held at the General Leonard Wood Army Community Hospital http://glwach.amedd.army.mil. The participants discussed the next steps the Department of Defense (DOD) should take to expand DOD’s tele-critical care program.
At this meeting, the Army, Navy, Air Force and Veteran Affairs (VA) leaders shared information on their current tele-critical care program’s status, capability, and future objectives. The VA attendees shared information on their efforts to improve critical care through telehealth. For example, two of the VA’s Veteran Integrated Service Networks (VISN) specifically VISN 23 and VISN 10, have developed robust TCC hubs.