Advanced ICU Care Presents Data Demonstrating Value of Tele-ICU Services and Population Health Analysis to Improve Outcomes in Intensive Care Patients.
Presentation at Society of Critical Care Medicine’s 46th Congress Highlights Positive Results from Initial Tele-ICU Services Study.
St. Louis, MO – January 24, 2017– Advanced ICU Care, the nation’s leading provider of high-acuity telehealth services, today announced the positive results of an initial study designed to assess the impact of leveraging comprehensive tele-ICU services in conjunction with population health data analyses to improve clinical outcomes for patients in the intensive care unit. The study results were presented by Dellice Dickhaus, M.D., FCCP, Advanced ICU Care’s Medical Director of Operations, at the Society of Critical Care Medicine’s 46th Critical Care Congress in Honolulu, HI.
The 12-month analysis results clearly demonstrated the benefits of tele-ICU services in providing data that impacted key clinical metrics, including:
- ICU length of stay (LOS) – average 36 percent below predicted¹
- ICU mortality rates – average 29 percent below predicted¹
- ICU days saved – 26,859¹
- Patient survival – 389 patients survived over expected¹
Population health analysis, or the assessment of combined health outcomes from a group of individuals, can be very useful to develop proactive care delivery models that enhance patient experience and lower costs. However, hospitals in general, and ICUs in particular, are often limited in their ability to transform extensive data sets into clinically-useful information through the use of advanced data analytics.
The implementation of a coordinated tele-ICU program can facilitate multiple solutions to this challenge by digitally capturing a continuous data stream of patient information. The resulting opportunity to focus on analytics enables evidence-based approaches to population health, including acuity-adjusted analysis and results benchmarking. A population-focused quality improvement process is enabled, wherein patients are treated, outcomes measured across a population, protocols revised, and future patients benefit from the analysis.
“The addition of tele-ICU services can provide for staffing resources and performance analytics that are otherwise unavailable. Together they support the design, systematization, and execution of clinical workflows that adhere to best-practice protocols,” said Dr. Dickhaus. “The process includes the systematic capture of large quantities of data, followed by analysis to determine population health impacts and then the adjustment of clinical protocols and workflows. Tele-ICU reporting capabilities measure the effectiveness of these protocols, allowing for a feedback loop and ongoing process improvement.”
Today’s presentation highlighted a retrospective analysis of more than 20,000 ICU patient stays over 12 months from 17 ICUs, each drawn from a single hospital system to increase standardization and comparability. The ICUs ranged in size from six to 32 beds in predominantly community-based hospitals, with more than half having daytime intensivist coverage. The risk-adjusted measurements utilized APACHE IVa (Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation) data metrics. “Our analysis suggests that a 24×7 tele-ICU program with strong analytics and population health analyses can improve a hospital’s ability to treat more patients of higher acuity, while improving best-practice compliance, overall quality, and cost outcomes,” continued Dr. Dickhaus.
Documented improvements over the 12-month period included:
- Prophylaxis Treatments
- Venous Thromboembolism (VTE) Prophylaxis: Variable compliance improved to 100 percent
- Stress Ulcer (SUP) Prophylaxis: Variable compliance improved to 100 percent
- Ventilator Management
- Actual duration of intubation: Results = Ventilator days were below predicted across all facilities
- Compliance with Low Tidal Volume (LTV) strategy
- Glucose Management
- Average Daily Glucose ranged from 136-139 mg/dl to fall below SCCM’s guideline for intervention
- Patient Volume, Mortality
- Average LOS reduced 36 percent over predicted while increasing total number of patient stays by 15% without adversely affecting hospital LOS¹
- 29% reduction in average mortality while acuity increased 9%¹
- Greater improvements in sepsis patients with 40% reduction in average mortality¹
¹as compared to APACHE predictions
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