Andrea Clegg, CFO of Advanced ICU Care, shares her deep experience in the telemedicine industry in the September edition of HFM Magazine. In a featured article titled “Telehealth: Bringing State-of-the-Art Technology to ICU Care,” Clegg provides insights into the impact that the introduction of telemedicine into the ICU may have on the clinical, operational, and financial aspects of a hospital. Using examples from Advanced ICU Care client experiences and industry analyses, she details how each of these areas may be affected when a tele-ICU is instituted.
Additionally, Clegg counsels healthcare CFOs on their part in this critical process as their hospital goes through the implementation. “Although the hospital CMO will play the primary role in overseeing a tele-ICU implementation and ensuring it achieves the promised clinical benefits, the CFO also has a critical role to play as the dogged champion of the metrics and financial benefits” noted Clegg. “When deciding to pursue a tele-ICU strategy to improve ICU performance, the CFO and finance team should play an immediate leadership role in helping to identify and assign value to specific measurements included in baseline data.”
Finally, in a sidebar focused on “Building and Operating a Tele-ICU,” Clegg details the three critical areas of investment associated with implementing a tele-ICU: platform costs, infrastructure costs, and staffing. In particular, she highlights the care-as-a-service partnership models, offered most notably by Advanced ICU Care, as a means of implementing a tele-ICU in a significantly more efficient manner than alternative implementations that can exceed $10 million in up-front costs.
For access to the complete articles, please click here.