BALTIMORE – A company’s technological approach to improving care in hospitals’ intensive care units is attracting interest from a variety of systems across the country.

Executives from Baltimore-based VISICU said the company combines information technology with telemedicine technology to provide improved specialist coverage in ICUs. Technology helps increase the ability of intensivists to monitor more patients, they say.

The use of intensivists in critical-care settings is one of three key patient safety practices backed by The Leapfrog Group, a coalition of about 150 public and private organizations.

Most recently, Borgess Medical Center, Kalamazoo, MI, signed a contract with VISICU to implement its eICU solution.

Also in December, VISICU signed a contract with Buffalo, NY-based Kaleida Health, a four-hospital healthcare system.

Early studies of the approach suggest that the eICU concept can both improve patient safety and reduce costs, two key selling points in helping information technology gain a foothold in healthcare organizations, said Cheryl Isen, a spokes-person for the company.

The eICU approach works through a combination of software and telemedicine. The VISICU software continually monitors patients’ vital signs to see if any changes indicate worsening of a patient’s condition. If so, the application generates alerts that appear on the intensivist’s monitor.

VISICU executives say the virtual approach would enable the nation’s 6,000 intensivists to oversee care for critically ill patients.

At Borgess, the eICU will be implemented by June to provide remote assistance to five critical care units, with 34 beds, and two spillover units with nine beds, said Sanford F. Tolchin, MD, chief medical officer for the facility.

Borgess expects to respond more quickly to changes in condition, reducing the number of deaths and providing appropriate interventions more quickly, Tolchin said. Hospital officials also expect to reduce patients’ lengths of stay in intensive settings, he said.

“With additional capacity, it’s like building an additional nine or 10 beds,” Tolchin said. With expected staffing of the eICU, Borgess may even have enough capacity to provide services to other hospitals in the area. That could help offset the total cost of the implementation – software, hardware and wiring – which Tolchin estimated at $50,000 per bed.

A test at Sentara Healthcare, a six-hospital Norfolk, VA-based healthcare system, reported a 25 percent reduction in ICU mortality during a 2001 study conducted by Cap-Gemini, Ernst & Young.

Advocate Health Care, an Oak Brook, IL-based healthcare system in the Chicago area, found a 12 percent drop in mortality for intensive care unit patients from May to September 2003 at two hospitals.

“These preliminary results are very exciting,” said Jim Skogsbergh, president and CEO of Advocate.

“Our clinical team looks to the eICU solution as a way to enhance our ability to provide top priority care and reduce complications,” said Cynthia Ambres, MD, chief medical officer of Kaleida Health. “The support from the eICU staff enables the nurse at the bedside the time necessary to focus on both the clinical and emotional needs of the patient.”