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Robin Androlake, RN, who works in Memorial Hermann Healthcare System’s eICU Advantage command center, monitors ICU patients in three hospitals. Not only is the eICU considered as a lifesaver, but also a potential cost benefit for units that are stressed from the shortage of critical care nurses and intensivists.

A postoperative patient at Memorial Hermann Southwest Hospital in Houston may owe his life to bedside experts who were on duty that night — two miles away at the hospital’s corporate headquarters.

The 54-year-old man was being monitored in the intensive care unit for an arrhythmia problem that had developed after his neck surgery. As closely as ICU floor personnel watched him, a team of critical care physicians and nurses was observing him in more detail through a bank of “mission control”-type flat-panel computer systems that displayed vital signs and a live video feed.

When the man began developing ventricular tachycardia — a sudden doubling or tripling of the heart rate that cripples the adequate flow of blood — the off-site physician immediately ordered bedside nurses to administer drugs and oxygen through a constant two-way audio link. The 3 AM crisis ended within two minutes.

Without the immediate intervention, “that might have developed into a code,” which itself could have taken an extra five minutes to set up, said Lisa Weavind, MD, the medical director for Memorial Hermann’s new “eICU Advantage” team. “When these patients do get compromised, they deteriorate pretty rapidly.”

Last month, Memorial Hermann Healthcare System joined a short list of 15 hospital organizations nationwide to adopt the “virtual ICU” concept, which supplements critical care units with computerized monitoring equipment that allows for nonstop oversight of multiple ICU patients. Memorial Hermann’s eICU is connected to 28 ICU beds at two of its hospitals in Houston. Plans call for all 200 ICU beds across its 11-hospital system to be eICU-monitored.

Not only is the eICU considered as a lifesaver, but also a potential cost benefit for units that are stressed from the shortage of critical care nurses and intensivists.

“This is tremendously exciting because of its potential benefit to patients,” Hugh Gilmore, MD, vice president and chief quality officer for Memorial Hermann, said in a statement. “It has the established potential to significantly reduce mortality and ICU length of stay, and increase nursing satisfaction and retention.”