According to a recent US News & Word Report article , an estimated 1.5 million healthcare jobs were lost in the first two months of COVID-19 as the country raced to curb the novel coronavirus by temporarily closing clinics and restricting non-emergency services at U.S. hospitals. This marked the start of the worst healthcare staffing crisis the United States has seen. While some returned to the workforce, others left permanently, creating a vacuum at a time of especially high demand. As time passed, many workers chose early retirement due to the high stress of the situation, and others chose to work shorter hours in outpatient settings, thus creating a lack of staffing, especially in ICU and inpatient settings. Along with this, prices for contracted labor, travel nurses, and locum tenens physicians have increased across the board, especially in areas with low accessibility. The need for healthcare professionals is at an all time high across the country as we continue to battle the
A Decentralized Model for Tele-Critical Care For the entire history of critical care telemedicine, the practice of tele-ICU has been primarily associated with central command centers. Central command centers, also referred to as bunkers or hubs, link intensivists and other personnel to multiple hospitals so that a relatively small number of critical care physicians can oversee the care of a large number of ICU patients. Capital costs of construction, installation, and training for a new command center range from $6 million to $8 million . At a time when healthcare costs must be minimized, reconsidering the value of central command centers is necessary. In numerous studies , tele-ICU has shown to improve patient outcomes and decrease mortality as well as ICU length of stay. Tele-ICU has clearly shown value in keeping patients closer to home, allowing smaller hospitals to treat high-acuity situations. So the question is, how key is a central command center to an effective tele-ICU progr