eICUs

Enhanced intensive care system allows remote access to patients | USA Today | 12.28.04

… The hospital’s parent, Kaleida Health System, is among an expanding number of hospital systems adopting “enhanced intensive care” technology — known as eICU — that allows critical care doctors and nurses to monitor dozens of patients at different hospitals simultaneously, much like an air traffic controller keeps track of multiple planes. …

Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit coalition of business and other groups working to improve hospital operations, has cited a severe shortage of intensivists practicing in the United States — less than 6,000 at a time when nearly 5 million patients are admitted to ICUs each year. …

Intensivist, hospitalist, and their real-time digital surrogates (eICUs) are where medicine is going—along with nurse staffing ratios, these are going to be big ticket marketing tools for quality establishments.