Maryland hospitals partner on eICU

Hoping to ease a looming shortage of emergency department physicians, a group of Maryland hospitals are setting up a Delaware based eICU to oversee critical care overnight. The hospitals will become part of a group of roughly 200 hospitals nationwide who have adopted this approach, including Sentara Healthcare in Roanoke, VA, Mercy Medical Center of Des Moines, IA, and UMass Memorial Healthcare.

The program, known as Maryland eCare, brings together six otherwise unconnected hospitals. Maryland eCare, which is funded with a $3 million grant, will be based at Wilmington, DE-based Christiana Care Health System. To funnel information to Christiana Care, the participating hospitals will mount a video camera and computer terminal in patient rooms, which will send a combination of info including vital signs, test results and pictures/video. The program should serve 71 patient beds across the hospitals by 2010. 

To learn more about the this program:
- read this Washington Post article [1]

Related Articles:
Trend: eICUs manage critical patients remotely [2]
eICU patient dispute examined [3]
Case study: Iowa provider creates eICU [4]
Hospital uses remote neurologists to treat strokes [5]