In a thought leadership article featured in Becker’s Hospital Review, Advanced ICU Care’s CEO Lou Silverman expands on the oft-discussed trend of the growing senior population to project its impact specific to the ICU. In an article entitled “The Impact of a Surging Baby Boomer Population on the ICU” Silverman discusses the importance of delivering the “gold standard of care” for the growing number of baby boomer Americans in order to save lives, reduce length of stay in the ICU and the hospital and improve quality outcomes. He details how innovations such as tele-ICU clinical services benefit patients, families, bedside teams and hospitals with “enlightened and appropriate care 24 x 7 x 365”.
Silverman highlights a range of trends that will drive demand for acute care in the hospital and displace less urgent needs, positing that “an increasing percentage of hospital beds will be ‘repurposed’ to serve as ICU beds,” as lower acuity care is increasingly addressed outside of the hospital. However, this change will not come easily, as the demand for ICU care already outpaces the availability of intensivists (critical care specialists). Further, while there have been dramatic changes in other industries, such as how people book travel or make investments remotely and electronically, he points out carefully that “there have been some parallel changes in healthcare, but the pace and magnitude of transformation has been more muted than in many other sectors.”
Given the growing intensivist shortage and increasing demand for care, hospitals and health systems will need to adopt innovative care models, such as tele-ICU, to deliver proven, cost-effective, high quality care. Silverman adds, “the inexorable march of history and innovation leaves most hospitals and healthcare with a clear choice – to sustain yesterday’s care model, downsized to meet today’s budget, or to adopt a more progressive care model that leverages the best of both bedside care delivery and technology-enabled clinical expertise.”
Click here to read the full article.
