Brookings Health System

Intensive Care/eICU

ICU-room.jpgThe Intensive Care unit (ICU) is available for patients who are acutely ill, critically injured, recovering from major surgery, or any other condition that requires continuous monitoring and/or specialized treatments.

We offer state-of-the-art cardiac, invasive monitoring, ventilators, and diagnostic equipment to provide the specialized care needs of the ICU patient. Our ICU-trained team of professionals including physicians; nurses; certified nurse anesthetists; respiratory therapists; physical, speech and occupational therapists; and pharmacists are prepared to provide specialized care 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In addition, social services and pastoral support are provided.

eICU® Patient Safety Technology at Brookings Health

We are pleased to partner with Avera Health in providing an additional level of care through Avera eICU Care, which allows a specially trained ICU physician, or an intensivist, to have real-time access to ICU patients at Brookings Health System.

Patients in the ICU typically exhibit a need for higher level of medical care and complications can develop suddenly among these patients. The earlier the complications are detected or prevented among these patients, the greater the success at treating the patient. This state-of-the art technology enables patients to receive an extra level of care in the ICU, and many times that translates into helping save lives.

Watch & Learn

Danielle Bohn explains how Brookings Health System’s eICU services helped her stay close to home with her three young children while her husband was treated for a serious illness. 

Benefits of eICU technology 

  • Improves patient safety and quality
  • Provides additional level of care without replacing the expertise provided by the staff at the bedside or the role of the patient’s attending physician 
  • Helps alleviate the financial, physical and emotional burden that transferring to larger cities to receive advanced care can create
  • Enhances physician workflow and allows for communication with other critical care staff
  • Reduces complications and mortality rates; results in shorter hospital stays for critical patients

How does eICU work?

The eICU system uses telemedicine technology, early warning software and remote monitoring to connect off-site specially trained physicians and critical care nurses to patients in the ICU.

Intensivists staffing the remote operations site, which is located at the Avera McKennan Hospital campus in Sioux Falls, make use of a camera and monitoring devices in the eICU patient room at the Brookings Health System to keep watch over ICU patients located in Brookings, while these patients are being cared for by onsite nurses and physicians.

The eICU operations center at the Avera McKennan Hospital acts like an air traffic control room. Intensivists who specialize in caring for critically ill patients and critical care nurses constantly monitor patient conditions by using several computers and powerful real-time cameras. Information such as patients’ vital signs, medications, X-rays, and test results are sent to the operations center via secure, high-speed data lines. Computers continuously analyze the information, helping the intensivists recognize changes in patient conditions. This allows for early intervention through coordination with Brookings Health System.

System Providers:

Provider

Anthony Hericks, D.O.

  • Intensive Care/eICU
  • Avera McKennan Hospital & University Health Center
Provider

Michael Heisler, M.D.

  • Intensive Care/eICU
  • Avera McKennan Hospital & University Health Center
Provider

Sanjay Subramanian, M.D.

  • Intensive Care/eICU
  • Avera McKennan Hospital & University Health Center