Mercy, a not-for-profit Catholic health care organization located in the Midwest, opened a four-story, 125,000 square-foot Virtual Care Center in Chesterfield, Missouri. The facility not only houses the nation’s largest single-hub electronic intensive care unit, but also provides a center for telemedicine innovation and a testing ground for new health care products and services. Using highly sensitive two-way cameras, online-enabled instruments and real-time vital signs, clinicians “see” patients that may be in one of Mercy’s traditional hospitals, a physician office, or in some cases, the patient’s home — 24/7, 365 days per year.
The new four-story facility which opened in 2015, is the nerve center for telehealth programs, including:
- Mercy SafeWatch, the largest single-hub electronic intensive care unit (ICU) in the nation. Doctors and nurses monitor patients’ vital signs and provide a second set of eyes to bedside caregivers in 30 ICUs across five states.
- Telestroke, which supports many community emergency departments (EDs) across the country who don’t have a neurologist on site. With Mercy’s telestroke program, patients who come to the ED with symptoms of a stroke can be seen immediately by a neurologist via a two-way audio and video connection.
- Virtual hospitalists — a team of doctors is dedicated to seeing patients within the hospital around-the-clock using virtual care technology. They can order needed tests or read results, resulting in quicker care.
Mercy’s Virtual Care Center is also designed to be a workspace for developing innovations in patient care, plus training and product testing.
You can download Mercy Virtual’s factsheet here.
This article is an update of a previous post.