Advanced ICU Care | X-RAY Has Left the Building -
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Published on: 7/1/2007
Last Visited: 4/7/2009
Dellice Dickhaus, MD, medical director for Advanced ICU Care and a practicing intensivist, helps provide remote care around the clock for patients in Saint Clare's ICU.
Advanced ICU Care's board-certified intensivists and criticalcare nurses remotely care for and monitor patients in multiple sites from their operations center, more than 400 miles away in St. Louis.
They use telemedicine technology developed by Baltimore, Md., firm VISICU that combines clinical management software with real-time video feeds and patient data, such as labs, vital signs and medications.
In the case of the critically ill patient, while the hospitalist was driving the patient's care program and taking care of many of the daily issues, Dr. Dickhaus helped manage the end-of-life issue.
She was available at the push of a button to talk with relatives and provide information they needed to make decisions about their family member's care.
She discussed the patient's prognosis and options with the family, and kept the hospitalist on staff apprised of the conversations.
Because Dr. Dickhaus and other clinicians at Advanced ICU Care had been helping manage the patient's care in the ICU, the patient's family gained confidence in the remote intensivists, says Dr. Dickhaus.