ATA18, The American Telemedicine Association’s (ATA) annual meeting and the world’s largest telehealth innovation and networking event, wrapped up last week on a high note. Thousands of attendees united to discuss the many pressing issues and opportunities driving telemedicine adoption in hospitals and health systems of all shapes and sizes. At this year’s conference, Advanced ICU Care had a strong leadership presence with company executives participating in three industry panels, where they shared expert perspective on the future of the industry, the diverse prospects for tele-ICU implementation and the value of telemedicine infrastructure for disaster preparedness.
Key session highlights include:
- CEO Lou Silverman emphasized how to make telemedicine more central to the future of healthcare, during the panel discussion, Designing the Future of Healthcare: Telemedicine Leadership from A to Z – And Spots In-Between. Joining other industry-leading CEOs to address the standing-room only crowd, he stated, “we’re delivering value, we’re delivering outcomes, we’re delivering ROI. We need to keep talking about this, making it obvious to the rest of healthcare.” A theme of Silverman’s comments was the important distinction between theory and experience in the industry. Health organizations with significant experience delivering improved clinical outcomes, for example, are able to rely upon and share hands-on learnings in regards to information security, the ability to support clinicians and technology with additional technical, change management and service expertise, rather than speculate as to the potential issues and impacts that might arise.
- To address the growing trend of tele-ICU adoption, utilization and evaluation at different hospital and health system structures, CMO Rachel Sackrowitz, MD moderated the panel Making Tele-ICU Work in Diverse Hospital Settings. Hospital executives representing a spectrum of hospital sizes and locations shed light on the importance of the quality and consistency of patient care and the support of bedside physicians and nursing staff gained when choosing to partner with a critical care telemedicine service provider. Panelists stressed how a thorough implementation set the stage for a successful tele-ICU partnership – addressing “what if” scenarios, giving the opportunity for bedside clinicians to express their concerns, and establishing rapport between the bedside and tele-ICU clinical teams. Perhaps a surprising outcome of the conversation was that none of the three facilities evaluated tele-ICU based on ROI alone. While maximizing cost savings and cost avoidance were important, the resulting clinical and operational improvements of the partnership were of significant weight when evaluating the overall value of tele-ICU. Advanced ICU Care is pleased to make this panel available to you. Register here to receive a recording of this ATA18 panel.
- In a session entitled Avoiding Disaster: Leveraging Telemedicine to Dodge Floods, Storms, and Other Efforts to Shut You Down, Andrea Clegg, Advanced ICU Care’s CFO, discussed the company’s closing of the Houston integrated care center during Hurricane Harvey. She explained how shutting down the company’s Houston center for nearly two weeks was nearly invisible to hospital clients because there was absolutely no disruption to care delivery. She emphasized how the company’s practices and infrastructure regarding redundancy, physician licensing practices and staffing flexibility at the other care hubs enabled seamless, uninterrupted service. Clegg noted that Advanced ICU Care’s multi-hub structure uniquely positions the organization to be responsive in the event of disasters, but that broader industry and governmental issues, such as ease of cross-state licensing and development of a robust, resilient communications infrastructure, could make disaster preparedness more widely achievable.
High-acuity telemedicine was notably elevated as a topic at this year’s meeting, including a keynote session relating the increasing necessity of telemedicine to address staffing and care shortages and the opportunity for digital health to care for the growing aging U.S. population were among the key themes of the ATA18 conference. As the “largest ICU” in the United States, as well as a growing provider of cardiac telemetry services, Advanced ICU Care looks forward to continuing to lead the high-acuity telemedicine discipline in driving increased acceptance and achieving expanded clinical impact.
