Nearly two hours south of Sacramento in the heart of Merced County sits Memorial Hospital Los Banos, a rural community hospital caring for the region’s most critically ill patients. Like many community hospitals across the country, Memorial Hospital Los Banos struggled to recruit critical care intensivists to this small community. Thanks to a $25 million investment made by Sutter Health a decade ago, patients at Memorial Hospital Los Banos receive 24-hour ICU monitoring and critical care support from a small room of experts nearly 150 miles away.
Sutter Health’s electronic Intensive Care Unit (eICU) marks its 10th anniversary in 2014. Thefirst of its kind on the West Coast (and only the second eICU in the nation), Sutter’s eICU has supported nearly 150,000 patients across 18 Sutter Health hospitals. This innovative technology ensures the sickest patients in both rural and large metropolitan areas have access to a team of physicians and nurses specially trained in the care of the critically ill, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Sutter’s eICU helps save lives.
· Since 2004, Sutter’s eICU has supported approximately 150,000 Northern California patients.
· Average of 30,000 interventions a year from eICU to bedside clinicians.
· The eICU, in conjunction, with Sutter Health’s systemwide sepsis initiative programs, helped reduce sepsis mortality rates by 32 percent since 2008, with more than 4,000 lives saved. Length of hospital stay for sepsis patients was lowered from 14.5 to 10 days, with an estimated cost savings of $88.6 million.
How the eICU works.
· eICU intensivists and nurses monitor up to 431 ICU beds around the clock from two central “hub” locations in Sacramento and San Francisco.
· Using secure, high-speed data transmission, in-room cameras and remote diagnostic tools, the eICU acts as a second set of eyes to provide timely crisis interventions to some of the sickest patients in Northern California. Sophisticated alarm monitors allow intensivists real time alerts to abnormal vital signs and lab results, leading to improved clinical quality.
· Sutter Health’s eICU team, consisting of 49 critical care intensivists and 57 critical care nurses, average about 80 calls for service and up to 150 calls a day from ICU clinicians around the system.
Sacramento’s eICU hub announces expansion.
Sutter Health will expand how it uses this innovative technology so it can continue to provide patients with exceptional, personal and consistent care. In the near future, Sutter Health will test eICU mobile carts in the Emergency Departments of Sutter Amador Hospital, Sutter Coast Hospital, Sutter Solano Medical Center and Memorial Hospital, Los Banos. These carts will enable caregivers to identify patients at risk for sepsis, a deadly blood stream infection, at an earlier stage—for earlier treatment.
“We’ve seen over the past 10 years how this extra set of eyes on our sickest patients helps clinicians at the bedside save lives and reduce the time patients spend in a hospital,” said John Winchell, eICU director for the Sacramento region. “We want to extend this advanced technology into other areas of our hospitals—like the emergency room—to further improve medical care quality.”
“Patients with early signs of sepsis often visit the emergency room,” said Adam Seiver, M.D.,eICU medical director for the Sacramento region. “With these new eICU carts, our critical care intensivists and nurses can quickly identify patients at risk for sepsis and begin treatment at an earlier stage. If we can treat sepsis and reduce septic shock, we can decrease a patient’s stay in the hospital.”
San Francisco’s eICU hub grows to support hospitals outside the network.
In addition to monitoring 10 Sutter Health hospitals, the San Franicsco eICU hub has grown to support hospitals outside the network including San Leandro Hospital in San Leandro, El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, Marin General Hospital in Greenbrae and Petaluma Valley Hospital.
“Expanding the eICU program outside of our Sutter Health network helps hospitals across Northern California provide round the clock care for our communities’ sickest patients,” said Jason Szabo, eICU director for the Bay Area Program. “By tracking vital signs, lab results and orders over a period of time, we can help our colleagues at any bedside spot concerning trends in a patient’s health.”
About Sutter Health
Serving patients and their families in more than 100 Northern California cities and towns, Sutter Health doctors, not-for-profit hospitals, home health care and other health care service providers share resources and expertise to advance health care quality and access. The Sutter Medical Network includes many of California’s top-performing, highest quality physician organizations as measured annually by the Integrated Healthcare Association. Sutter-affiliated hospitals are regional leaders in cardiac care, women’s and children’s services, cancer care, orthopedics and advanced patient safety technology.
For more information about the not-for-profit Sutter Health network, please visit
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