A growing number of hospitals are relying on remote ICUs to monitor and evaluate patients virtually, which helps to cope with an unrelenting COVID-19 caseload.
Tag Archives: Critical Care
TELEMEDICINE: SENTARA HEALTHCARE IN VIRGINIA OVERSEES 132 CRITICAL PATIENTS WITH ITS “E-ICU”
From ‘Government Technology’ (June 29, 2020):
The hospital system — the first in the country — wired bedside video cameras and microphones on a secure network in 2000 so a medical team could monitor patients at multiple hospitals’ intensive care units from one command center around the clock.
When Sentara Healthcare first launched its “eICU,” the plan was to provide an extra set of eyes on critical patients, especially overnight when staffing was down to a skeleton crew.
Before the coronavirus arrived in Virginia, the average number of telemedicine visits within Sentara Medical Group was about 20 a day. Now, it is more than 2,000 a day, according to the company. Between March and June 21, its clinicians had 314,000 total patient visits, with about 51 percent of them happening virtually.
COMMENTARY
Telemedicine has been slowly developing for 10 or 20 years. The models have been developing according to the requirements of their local areas.
Dartmouth deals with a rural area and has sophisticated aid to it’s associated hospitals and transportation systems to bring Stabilized patients to the main hospital.
Sentara deals with a more urban area and has a central brain aiding the peripheral hospitals in the delivery of treatment locally.
The Tele intensive care unit system of Santara features a central ” Mission Control” With patients in multiple peripheral Intensive care units connected by telemetry. This efficient system allows the peripheral ICUs to operate at a higher level with less staff.
Such telemetry could allow convalescent hospitals and even nursing homes to improve medical care.
With such excellent models one can hope that American medicine will rapidly improve in the post Covid era, riding the wave of telehealth advances.
—Dr. C.
DOCTORS CALL: “CHRONIC COUGH – DIAGNOSIS AND TREATMENT” (MAYO CLINIC)
On the Mayo Clinic Radio program, Dr. Kaiser Lim, a Mayo Clinic pulmonary and critical care physician, explains chronic cough and how it can be treated.
COMMENTARY
If you have had a cough for more than 8 weeks, the good news is that you don’t have Covid 19. The bad news is that you need a Medical evaluation, tests and imaging to find out what is going on.
COUGH is not a disease, but is a manifestation, a SYMPTOM of a disease.
Your Primary Care Doctor will do a Medical History, an examination and a chest X-Ray which may allow her to DIAGNOSE what disease or problem Is causing the cough, and allow her to treat it.
If you continue to cough, you will be referred to a specialist, such as an Allergist or a Pulmonologist. ENT (sinusitis) and Gastroenterology (GERD) are 2 other medical fields often involved.
Usually blessed relief comes when Chronic Cough is properly diagnosed and treated, but a few Patients continue to suffer, challenging the best of medical care. 2 of my friends continue to cough after Medical School Level evaluations.
Nature continues to hide some of her secrets from Medical Science.
Doctors Without Waiting Rooms 