VA Health System Adds Telehealth Program to Intensive Care Unit

Aiming to enhance care quality and increase access to consultations, the Bay Pines VA Healthcare System (BPVAHCS) added a telehealth program called TeleCritical Care (TeleCC) to the intensive care unit (ICU) of the C.W.Y VA Medical Center.

The Bay Pines VA Healthcare System is part of the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), which aims to provide its patients with high-quality healthcare, among other resources. 

The BPVAHCS recently added TeleCC to its ICU to enhance care quality by adding a monitoring resource. Available 24/7, the program allows Veterans Health Administration (VHA) physicians and nurses to use virtual technology and clinical information systems to communicate with critical care and ICU clinicians.

“The implementation of TeleCritical Care in our ICU will expand our ability to thoroughly assess the most complicated cases,” said Paul M. Russo, director and CEO of BPVAHCS, in a press release. “Having the ability to connect with other clinicians at any time of day truly exemplifies how the VA is leveraging advanced technologies to provide the highest quality of care to our Veterans.”

The program involves remote video assessments conducted by TeleCC physicians, who can virtually "enter" the ICU room through a bedside camera. When this happens, the TeleCC provider becomes visible to the local staff and hospitalized veterans on dedicated room monitors.

“By simply pushing a button, any member of the ICU team can receive on-demand collaboration from a critical care physician or ICU nurse,” said Lynn Fitzwater, a member of the TeleCC team, in the press release. “The primary goal of TeleCC is to provide exceptional care to our nation’s critically ill Veterans and eligible family members by working in partnership with the bedside staff.”

Veterans can opt out of TeleCC if they are not comfortable with it.

The VA has increasingly employed virtual care modalities over the past few years as telehealth use skyrocketed across the country.

A study published in April found that video-enabled tablet devices were an effective channel for providing US Veterans with mental healthcare services. For the study, the VA provided 13,180 rural participants with a tablet device that provided visits related to psychotherapy, medication management, and comprehensive suicide risk evaluations.

After observing that the number of psychotherapy visits increased while suicide-related situations and emergency department visitations declined, researchers determined that tablet devices can be used to deliver mental healthcare services to US veterans.

Another study published in the Annals of Family Medicine in October described how the VA added a quality improvement project to improve telehealth access for veterans battling homelessness. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, several populations faced care barriers due to limited access to virtual care resources. One such group was homeless veterans.

Driven by the goal of increasing telehealth video visits by 10 percent in 16 weeks, researchers employed several strategies. These strategies included using a flowchart that supported the standardized workflows of video visits, the Digital Divide Consult process to connect homeless veterans to technological support, and monthly meetings to review progress, perform demonstrations of video visit applications, and share successful methods.

Through the quality improvement project, the proportion of video visits among all telehealth appointments rose from 4.8 percent in December 2020 to 10.3 percent in April 2021, the researchers found.