eICU Helps Smaller Hospitals

A new device, the eICU, is allowing smaller hospitals to monitor their patients better. According to this article at the Wall Street Journal Health Blog, Visicu, Inc’s new product is being used by 156 hospitals around the nation, and those hospitals have a lower mortality rate as well as shorter stays in the ICU.

This machine monitors things such as a patient’s pulse, temperature, blood pressure, and blood oxygen content constantly. Even though this is an expensive way to monitor patients health levels, a 160 hospital bed in Kansas has seen dramatic improvement since implementing the use of the eICU. Although it costs $160,000 to keep in operation, they’ve seen a fall in nursing staff turnover and revenue at the hospital has risen by 15.3%.