Sutter Health Reaches Major Milestone in Patient Safety

SACRAMENTO, Calif. February 1, 2007 – Sutter Health has further expanded its eICU® patient-safety system completing, on-time, its implementation of this life-saving technology. The expansion brings the total number of beds being monitored to 359 across Sutter's Northern California network of hospitals.

“In 2003, Sutter Health made a promise to our caregivers and patients – to further advance quality in health care and patient safety through the use of advanced technologies,” said Gordon Hunt, M.D., chief medical officer for Sutter Health. “Three years later we not only have completed our aggressive expansion timeline, but we have fundamentally transformed how ICU care is delivered.”

Sutter Health was the first health care organization on the West Coast to use this advanced technology and the first health network in the Western United States to bring online two eICU centers for constant monitoring of critically ill patients. Through early warning software and advanced video and remote monitoring, the eICU system allows intensivists, which are physicians that specialize in critical care, and specially trained nurses in the Sutter Health network to provide an additional layer of monitoring for these patients 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Patients are monitored via two centrally located “hubs” in Sacramento and San Francisco.

Since the eICU technology was adopted in the Sacramento region in 2003, physicians have recognized improvements in patient care. In one hospital example, ICU mortality is down more than 30 percent.

“It’s clear our eICU technology brings additional layers of expertise and safety to our patients,” added Dr. Hunt.

Sutter is at the forefront of national efforts to bring innovative and lifesaving technologies like this to the bedside.

“Our eICU system truly is just one example of the broad range of patient safety initiatives we are investing in that advance safety and clinical quality to improve patient care,” said Dr. Hunt. “We are committed to making every patient experience the very best it can be, so we’re also deploying bar-coding technology that improves hospital medication delivery safety and a systemwide paperless electronic health record.”

Across the nation, eICU technology from Baltimore, Md.-based VISICU, Inc. is installed or is being installed at only 34 health systems.

Sutter Health is the only hospital system in California with eICU technology and on the West Coast, was the first to connect a rural hospital to an eICU® system. One of Sutter’s eICU® hubs is monitoring patients at Sutter Coast Hospital – more than 425 miles away.

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Contacts
Sutter Health
Karen Garner
(916) 286-8297
garnerk@sutterhealth.org