ICU on demand 24/7
The leapfrog group recommends staffing the ICU with board-certified/ board eligible intensivists. Noncompliance with these recommendations will result in providing substandard care to your sickest patients and downgrading of the hospital which results in diminished ability to negotiate contracts with third parties. It is well known that the majority of Hospital deaths occur in ICU and the majority of overnight expenses occur in ICU. ICU on-demand would make a sizable dent in these issues. Your patient’s are going to be significantly safer in your hospital There is a soaring national shortage of intensivists. It is almost impossible for a small community hospital to be able to staff the ICU with high quality intensivists 24/7. This difficulty is especially true for the after-hours. There are endless possibilities how ICU on-demand can help you. For example, if you have a pulmonologist or an intensivist who can only cover morning hours with a minimum of 8 hours per day, ICU on-demand can take over the after hour calls hence achieving the highest level of the LeapFrog classification. This model makes hiring local intensivists easier by making the job more appealing. If your intensivist/ pulmonologist is only able to staff the ICU for at least 4 hours daily for at least 5 days a week, ICU on-demand can take over the after hour calls hence achieving B in the LeapFrog survey and significantly improving care for your ICU patients.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
The hospital contracts with ICU on-demand. There is no upfront cost there is no initiation fees. There is no hardware or software to be installed. A number of intensivists will apply for privileges in your hospital. Once privileges are approved, your ICU nurses, staff, nurse manager, residents, mid-levels or hospitalists will get a single contact number where they have the ability to contact an intensivist any time, day or night, 24/7. The response time is immediate but definitely in less than 5 minutes in compliance with the leapfrog recommendations*.
FACTS
- Consults are initiated by your hospital staff. The consult can be initiated at any time of the day or night. The response is immediate. A consult is a question that your hospital staff, nurses, mid levels, nursing, residents or hospitalists wish to get the opinion from a board certified/eligible highly-trained intensivist. There are no minimum or maximum amounts of minutes that are spent in each consult. After rendering an opinion and devising a treatment plan, it is the responsibility of the healthcare provider at the site to order such recommendations if he/she chooses to. The consult will go over algorithmic treatment plan not merely answering the simple question. Any follow-up questions are considered a new consult.
- ICU on-demand staff intensivists are highly trained and are accustomed to dealing with physician extenders. Hence, each consult will offer a comprehensive look at most aspects of patient care that could contribute to the patient condition or could be the result of the suggested interventions.
- The consult is not limited to the ICU. ICU on-demand can be consulted from the emergency room, radiology suite, hospital wards, and/or the operating room.
- If your hospital’s healthcare provider desires to give sign out or get a sign out he/she can call the consult line.
QUALITY CONTROL
We maintain a high level of quality. Our physicians are top-notch physicians. Random sampling of consults and opinions rendered are performed to ensure maintenance of the highest level of quality. If the hospital or even any of the hospital staff feels that there is diminishing level of quality for a certain physician or in general he or she can call the hotline provided.
The physician whose response time or quality were not satisfactory the staff or the managers or the hospital administration will be removed from this hospital roster until the investigation is complete. A resolution will be offered. If the resolution is not satisfactory to the hospital, the physician will be removed permanently from the responses to this particular hospital. Internally if the physician has repeated complaints from 2 different hospitals or 3 times from the same hospital, the physician will be removed completely from the company.
We maintain the highest level of quality in regards to nosocomial infections. This is a hot topic in hospital management and ICU management. We have protocols that we can offer to implement for free to the hospital to be approved by the appropriate committees to be applied in ICU if needed. These protocols are proven to be the highest level with excellent results. We would like to the hospital to provide us with baseline nosocomial infections rates, mortality rate, transfer rate and other quality parameters to be able to monitor the effects of the periodic consults on decreasing nosocomial infections.