.floatimg-left-hort { float:left; } .floatimg-left-caption-hort { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:300px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-vert { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right:15px; width:200px;} .floatimg-left-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; font-size: 12px; width:200px;} .floatimg-right-hort { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px;} .floatimg-right-caption-hort { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px; font-size: 12px; } .floatimg-right-vert { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px;} .floatimg-right-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; font-size: 12px; } .floatimgright-sidebar { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; border-top-style: double; border-top-color: black; border-bottom-style: double; border-bottom-color: black;} .floatimgright-sidebar p { line-height: 115%; text-indent: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar h4 { font-variant:small-caps; } .pullquote { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 150px; background: url(http://www.dmbusinessdaily.com/DAILY/editorial/extras/closequote.gif) no-repeat bottom right !important ; line-height: 150%; font-size: 125%; border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} .floatvidleft { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatvidright { float:right; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;}
Mercy Medical Center’s sickest patients are getting out of the intensive care unit faster and fewer are dying, facts that hospital officials credit to a new electronic ICU monitoring system.

Mercy has reduced the lengths of stay and mortality rates at its intensive care units in Des Moines and Sioux City by between 30 and 36 percent in the past year compared with its experience before the system was installed, said Dr. Michael Witte, a Mercy intensivist.

That equates to 202 more patients who survived in the ICUs last year, compared with how many would have been expected to die given the collective severity of their conditions in the first 24 hours of care, as measured by the Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation (APACHE) rating scale. The electronic monitoring system also helped Mercy to reduce the total stays in the ICUs by more than 13,800 patient-days.

“I think it surprised the docs and nurses, and it surprised administration,” Witte said. “I think there are remnants of some disbelief in areas of our system. But objectively, you can determine what length of stay is, and there’s no argument over life and death, so the mortality rate isn’t an issue.”

The system, called eICU Connect, enables doctors and nurses at Mercy’s Des Moines and Sioux City hospitals to remotely monitor each of the 78 ICU beds from a $1.5 million command center at the main hospital campus in Des Moines.

Across the country, more than 300,000 intensive care patients, or about 9 percent of all ICU patients, were monitored by 36 such centralized systems in 2008, said Beth Bice, Mercy’s eICU operations director. Mercy, which has monitors installed at each of its 54 ICU beds in Des Moines and 24 in Sioux City, last year monitored more than 7,300 patients remotely. The system also will be used to monitor eight ICU beds at Mercy Medical Center – West Lakes when it opens.

In June, Mercy plans to expand the system to Grinnell Regional Medical Center, which will be the first of a number of small rural hospitals at which it hopes to provide the service. It recently applied for a federal grant to install the system at seven rural critical-access hospitals in Central Iowa.

“The surprising aspects are that the patients have really embraced it,” Bice said. “They’re really appreciative of having the extra level of monitoring in place, the extra eyes watching out for them.”