Manufacturer: Intensive-care monitoring system is reducing the risk of death
The company that makes an intensive-care monitoring system used by the four hospitals of Greensboro's Moses Cone Health System is reporting that patients in hospitals using that system are less likely to die than intensive-care patients elsewhere. (We wrote about Cone's use of the system back in August.)
The company compiled death rates at 156 hospitals that use its eICU system and compared those figures to the national average. During a two-year study period, It found that of 185,464 patients in intensive care at those hospitals, adjusting for the severity of the patients' conditions, 9.6 percent of patients died, compared with the national average of 13.5 percent. Figures for individual hospitals weren't available.
Keep in mind that this study was commissioned by the system's manufacturer and, so far as I can tell, hasn't been peer-reviewed. Still, if those numbers hold up, it's a good sign.
Comments (2)
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As the director of our remote ICU, eLink, I am pleased to see the results reported by VISICU. I have attended several national meetings on remote ICU medicine and have seen numerous abstracts reported by several hospital systems, all seemingly demonstrating similar outcomes - improved ICU mortality and improved lengths of stay. I concur that it would be desirable to see published literature in peer reviewed journals and there has been only a few articles that I know of in the last 8-10 years. I am proud to note that the Moses Cone system had the best composite score in the country (among users of the VISICU system - approx 35 or 40 hospital systems) in the Benchmark Reports for the fourth quarter of last year. These are measures of "best practice" in the ICU. Further, our severity-adjusted mortality ratios for the first quarter of this year are outstanding - 0.82 for the overall system.
Posted on May 21, 2008 6:39 PM
Good news indeed, David. Thanks for sharing it.
Posted on May 22, 2008 10:53 AM