South Georgia Hospitals to Gain Access to Remote Monitoring Services

To expand critical care access, Emory Healthcare will provide Memorial Hospital and Manor and Coffee Regional Medical Center with access to its electronic intensive care unit (eICU), giving patients seeking care at these facilities the option to receive critical care through remote monitoring services.

Made up of almost 24,000 employees and 11 hospitals, Emory Healthcare is a comprehensive academic healthcare system in Georgia.

Located in Bainbridge, Georgia, Memorial Hospital and Manor is an 80-bed community hospital and a 107-bed long-term care facility that serves patients within Decatur County. Based in Douglas, Georgia, Coffee Regional Medical Center is a nonprofit acute care hospital containing 98 beds. 

Through the collaboration with Emory Healthcare, these two hospitals will gain access to telehealth-based remote monitoring resources through which they can expand access to critical care for ICU patients.

“During night and weekend shifts at smaller outlying hospitals, intensivists may not always be present to assist onsite physicians and providers, so additional resources are often needed to care for some of the sickest patients in a hospital,” said Cheryl Hiddleson, Emory Healthcare's director of eICU operations, in a press release. “Our services provide consult via a video and audio platform to onsite physicians, staff and patients, where we can see and communicate bi-directionally between the regional or community hospital and the Emory eICU Center in Atlanta.”

Specifically, Emory eICU physicians and nurses will be able to remotely monitor patients at Memorial Hospital and Manor and Coffee Regional Medical Center. The monitoring services are active 24/7.

Further, Emory intensivists can help support on-site staff at the two hospitals through telehealth-enabled consultations. Emory's eICU will monitor six ICU beds at Memorial Hospital and 10 ICU beds at Coffee Regional Medical Center.

“As an affiliate of Emory Healthcare, we are happy to be part of the Emory eICU network,” said Vicki Lewis, CEO of Coffee Regional Medical Center, in the press release. “This important service provides an extra set of eyes and additional clinical expertise for our critically ill patients. Our collaboration with Emory permits Coffee Regional Medical Center access to both quality initiatives and state-of-the-art resources for our patients and caregivers.”

As interventions involving remote patient monitoring continue to grow, the application of this technology to ICU treatment is not unprecedented.

For example, in February 2022, Temple University Hospital implemented a remote patient monitoring sensor in its ICU.

With the ability to monitor patient position, orientation, activity, and respiration rate, the sensor provides clinicians with warnings when a patient might experience a pressure injury or fall.

The eICU model also helped support critical care at prominent healthcare organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mayo Clinic and Advocate Aurora Health used their already established eICUs to expand critical care access during COVID-19 surges without further straining overwhelmed staff and health system resources. Leaders from the organizations described the benefits of the model in interviews with mHealthIntelligence last year.