School of Medicine Publications and Presentations
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-2023
Abstract
OBJECTIVES:
Studies evaluating telemedicine critical care (TCC) have shown mixed results. We prospectively evaluated the impact of TCC implementation on risk-adjusted mortality among patients stratified by pre-TCC performance.
DESIGN:
Prospective, observational, before and after study.
SETTING:
Three adult ICUs at an academic medical center.
PATIENTS:
A total of 2,429 patients in the pre-TCC (January to June 2016) and 12,479 patients in the post-TCC (January 2017 to June 2019) periods.
INTERVENTIONS:
TCC implementation which included an acuity-driven workflow targeting an identified “lower-performing” patient group, defined by ICU admission in an Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation diagnoses category with a pre-TCC standardized mortality ratio (SMR) of greater than 1.5.
MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS:
The primary outcome was risk-adjusted hospital mortality. Risk-adjusted hospital length of stay (HLOS) was also studied. The SMR for the overall ICU population was 0.83 pre-TCC and 0.75 post-TCC, with risk-adjusted mortalities of 10.7% and 9.5% (p = 0.09). In the identified lower-performing patient group, which accounted for 12.6% (n = 307) of pre-TCC and 13.3% (n = 1671) of post-TCC ICU patients, SMR decreased from 1.61 (95% CI, 1.21–2.01) pre-TCC to 1.03 (95% CI, 0.91–1.15) post-TCC, and risk-adjusted mortality decreased from 26.4% to 16.9% (p < 0.001). In the remaining (“higher-performing”) patient group, there was no change in pre- versus post-TCC SMR (0.70 [0.59–0.81] vs 0.69 [0.64–0.73]) or risk-adjusted mortality (8.5% vs 8.4%, p = 0.86). There were no pre- to post-TCC differences in standardized HLOS ratio or risk-adjusted HLOS in the overall cohort or either performance group.
CONCLUSIONS:
In well-staffed and overall higher-performing ICUs in an academic medical center, Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation granularity allowed identification of a historically lower-performing patient group that experienced a striking TCC-associated reduction in SMR and risk-adjusted mortality. This study provides additional evidence for the relationship between pre-TCC performance and post-TCC improvement.
Recommended Citation
Boyle, W. A., Palmer, C. M., Konzen, L., Fritz, B. A., White, J., Simkins, M., Dieffenderfer, B., Iqbal, A., Bertrand, J., Meyer, S., Kerby, P., Buckman, S., Despotovic, V., Kozlowski, J., Crimmins Reda, P., Zwir, I., Gu, C. C., & Ofoma, U. R. (2023). Telemedicine Critical Care-Mediated Mortality Reductions in Lower-Performing Patient Diagnosis Groups: A Prospective, Before and After Study. Critical care explorations, 5(10), e0979. https://doi.org/10.1097/CCE.0000000000000979
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Publication Title
Critical care explorations
DOI
10.1097/CCE.0000000000000979
Academic Level
faculty
Mentor/PI Department
Neuroscience
Comments
Copyright © 2023 The Authors.