Officials with Atmore Community Hospital (ACH) announced they have entered into an agreement with UAB Medicine to provide the hospital with UAB eMedicine tele-critical care coverage.
“We have been working with UAB and their eMedicine team to broaden the tele-health capabilities at ACH,” ACH Administrator Brad Lowery said. “We are happy to announce that we have now introduced the tele-critical care coverage at ACH.”
The UAB eMedicine tele-critical care program allows staff physicians in the hospital ICU to call physicians at UAB for a consultation. After establishing the initial care plan, UAB’s doctors will call in every day to make rounds on certain patients, circling back to make recommendations and adjust settings on equipment. The specialist will work directly with ACH physicians to determine the best care needed for each patient.
“The benefits we gain by providing UAB Telemedicine services such as tele-stroke and tele-critical care in Atmore are remarkable advances for our patients and our community,” Shane Harigel, M.D., said. “This service also allows physicians another way of continuously providing high quality care to our patients.”
According to hospital officials, a large number of patients being admitted to the hospital ICU have much lower acuity levels than those they will now be able to provide care for. Having this specialist consult available to patients and ICU physicians will allow for a much better decision-making process regarding the need to transfer the patient or treat them locally.
“As we have stated before, our goal is to provide the best possible care as close to home as possible for our patients,” Escambia County Health Care Authority CEO Jeff Booth said. “By adding UAB tele-critical care coverage in Atmore, we can now provide much more care to our community than before.”