BREVARD COUNTY, FLORIDA – Health First’s VitalWatch, Central Florida’s only remote critical care management system, has been featured on the Health First Family Channel. Staffed 24/7, VitalWatch’s critical care physicians and nurses monitor remotely every ICU bed in all three Health First hospitals using state-of-the art technology.
Mike Means
“Our Vital Watch Program has elevated the quality and safety of critical care management at Health First to a new dimension that is now an imbedded component of our organizational culture, and distinguishes us from other systems,” said Mike Means, Health First President and CEO.
VitalWatch eICU® program, an electronic clinical surveillance and management system that essentially puts a critical care expert, also called an intensivist, at the bedside around the clock in all 78 intensive care unit rooms in the Health First system. It’s an extra layer of monitoring and clinical care vigilance that augments the care provided by the patient’s attending physician and the bedside care team.
A computer tracks all the encrypted patient data fed in over private, high-speed, dedicated fiber optic lines. Remotely operated cameras and microphones stationed in each ICU room allow doctors and nurses in the COR to talk with a nurse or look in on a patient if they need to, even zooming in to check eye movement or read a monitor. The software is designed to constantly check each patient’s condition, comparing it against accepted medical standards and signaling a warning, known as a Smart Alert, if a patient starts to stray from normal.
Dr. Rosenfeld
That collaboration between technology, the bedside caregivers and the VitalWatch critical care physicians and nurses is at the heart of the eICU®, which came online in June 2004, at that time the first such remote ICU monitoring system in the Southeast and only the ninth in the nation.
The eICU® concept was developed in 1998 by two Johns Hopkins intensivists, Dr. Mike Breslow and Dr. Brian Rosenfeld who compared it to America’s air traffic control system, which allows a relatively few highly trained experts to monitor and manage the safety of airline travel. They incorporated their idea under the name VISICU and hold a copyright on the term eICU®, installing their first commercial system in 2000 at the large non-profit Sentara Healthcare system in Virginia.
Larry Garrison
Health First Executive Vice President & COO Larry Garrison heard about the idea from a Sentara colleague and invited him to present the idea to Health First’s Board of Directors.
“The cost involved was substantial, but everything we read and understood from the few other hospitals that had an eICU® at the time was that it really enhanced the overall care of patients,” recalls William T. Brennan, now the Board’s chairman. “The proof is in the outcomes. Data would indicate that it has decreased the mortality rate and how do you put a price on that outcome?”
CLICK HERE FOR RELATED STORY:
eICU®: Remote Control Medicine On the Cutting Edge
Health First’s VitalWatch eICU® program is an electronic medical system that puts a critical care expert at the bedside around the clock in all 78 intensive care unit rooms in Health First’s three Brevard County, Florida hospitals.
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