In today's health care, we're noticing that patients are sicker than they were
years ago and yet the number of physicians that we have to take care of
critically ill patients has not increased to keep up with the demands on
the services required. It's been projected that by the year 2020
there is perhaps going to be a need for sixteen thousand intensivist or critical
care physicians. Currently, there are only 6,500 practicing physicians. Research has
shown that patients who are cared for by a critical care trained provider have
better outcomes than those who are not, so it is an issue, it's a national issue,
and it's one that we really need to create and develop a solution for.
OSF ConstantCare is a great addition to the great care that we already provide
at the bedside. The critical care teams at the bedside outline the treatment
plan for the critically ill patients and the OSF ConstantCare make sure that
that treatment plan is put into place and continued, especially at off-hours
when intensivists are not available at the bedside. As I'm sitting in the
constant care setting, which is just basically an office with multiple
monitors with nursing staff, we monitor multiple units simultaneously. The units
themselves have video so that we can directly interact with the patient. We
can directly interact with the staff in the room and they see us on the video
monitor as we see them. So the program works because it supplements the
outstanding care that's provided at the bedside. We're able to identify a
climbing trend in the patient's condition, whether it's a set of labs,
vital signs, physiologic parameters and identify them much quicker than perhaps
the bedside team can. The bedside team is stretched in all directions. They are
busy between patients, and our monitoring center through the use of proprietary
software is able to identify these trends before there is actually a
declining the patient condition. So the result is a tremendous
improvement in the quality of care that the patients receive in their mortality
and the length of stay that they occur in the hospital. It's really changing the
face of health care here. I believe this clinical initiative is consistent with
our Ministrywide vision of One OSF. If you're a patient in intensive care unit
in Peoria we want the same experience and the same clinical expertise and
oversight that you would have in Bloomington. The rural hospitals that
will be participants in this program will have services available that
they've never had available and sophisticated care they've never had before.
At OSF St. Mary Medical Center we have a very diverse staff, however the numbers
of each specialty are less than you would have in a larger community. This
program allows a smaller rural hospital like this one the ability to have the
same level of expertise that you'd find in a major medical center. This program
is more relevant than ever. Serving a small community, we're taking care of an
increasing number of patients who are more complex than ever before. The
program gives us the ability to serve some of our sickest patients in the
intensive care with the quality that would be attained at a bigger center and
as we are able to provide OSF ConstantCare or eICU to other hospitals outside
the OSF system we will also be able to provide the protocols that we have
developed to allow them to have the excellence and outcomes and care on
their patients as well.
The biggest benefits for our patients are that we're providing better care,
higher quality care and we're able to get them home and out of the hospital
much sooner with a better outcome. We all know that there are evidence-based
protocols such as ventilator bundles that are appropriate for each patient
that are on assisting mechanical ventilation. OSF ConstantCare is really
the mechanism to assure that those are given to every patient that required them,
and that's just one example of a multitude of protocols that benefit
patients. Since the implementation of this program we've already seen
tremendous improvement in the care provided in our ICUs. All of that have
increased and it's helping to provide improved patient outcomes. I think that
OSF ConstantCare is saving lives. I think that as we continue to improve it as all
processes in the hospital improve that we're going to see the benefits of it
for years to come. This is truly a technology that improves the quality and
safety of care that we deliver. It's really an investment that's been made by
the OSF HealthCare System that doesn't have a financial return. The return is
the improvement in the quality and safety of the patients that we serve. There
is no question that OSF ConstantCare is going to do exactly what we intend it to
do: lower the cost of care, improve outcomes and be expanded to areas that
currently don't have this service available.