MEADOW’S REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER • GEORGIA • ICU
Tele-ICU helps Hospital Achieve an “A” Leapfrog Safety Grade
Key Benefits
Less Transfers
Higher Leapfrog Score
What's the value of a specialist telemed provider?
Let Eagle Telemedicine show you the benefits of specialty consults. Find out how TeleHospitalists, Tele-ID services and Tele-ICU specialist can improve patient care and help your hospital’s bottom-line.
What Telemedicine Conditions Motivates Hospitals to Launch Tele-ID
Infectious disease is one of the most frequently consulted service in most hospitals. However, several media outlets are projecting a shortage of infectious disease providers. Furthermore, a maldistribution of these specialists exacerbates this shortage by limiting the locations where infectious disease telehealth physicians are available for consult.
ID physicians are primarily operating out of major metropolitan areas on the east and west coast of the United States. Large swaths of the south and mid-west have less than one infectious disease doctor per 100,000 people. And yet, there is an abundance of these specialists in some regions.
To fill the void, Eagle was inundated with requests for specialist telemed physicians, particularly infectious disease doctors, who could quickly “beam in” to guide patient diagnosis and treatment during the spread of COVID-19.
Dr. David Fitzgerald, an Eagle Tele-ID specialist, has been in the thick of the COVID-19 crisis. He says that on-the-ground Emergency Department and internal medicine doctors were instrumental in making the initial COVID-19 diagnoses. Then, a Tele-ID specialist could join in a consult with patients and the local healthcare team.
“Very often, it’s a nurse who works with us, who helps with the exam,” says Fitzgerald, “then we develop the treatment plan, share it with the local team, and bring in subspecialists when needed, like a pulmonologist, cardiologist or renal Specialist.”
But COVID-19 is just one condition that prompts hospitals to launch a crisis-oriented Tele-ID solution. Infectious disease specialists diagnose and treat a broad range of conditions ― pneumonia, respiratory failure, sepsis and other life-threatening conditions.
