If you get seriously ill or injured in a rural part of Maryland, the doctor overseeing your care just might be in Wilmington, Del.
With a $3 million grant from BlueCross BlueShield, six Maryland hospitals formed a partnership called Maryland eCare and contracted with intensive-care specialists at Wilmington?s Christiana Care Health System.
The hospitals, looking for solutions to intensive-care physician shortages, will use a program to provide up-to-the-minute vital statistics and video feeds for doctors? patients.
The doctors in Delaware will call the shots on medical decisions between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. Their decisions will be carried out by nurses and other staff in Maryland.
The trend alarmed Bill Wasserman, president of the Maryland State Medical Society, who said the state has a growing reputation for being inhospitable to physicians.
“It?s unique but disturbing,” Wasserman said. “The reason you have intensivecare is that these patients are terribly sick and the most vulnerable patients that we have. Adequate bedside care is paramount.”
Maryland?s eCare program will serve 71 patient beds in six hospitals by 2010, officials said, and at least four other hospitals are considering participating.
About 200 hospitals around the country now participate in such long-distance monitoring by doctors, said Dr. Marc Zubrow, Christiana?s medical director.
Doctors can handle 120 to 150 patients each, he said, with help from computer programs that track vital readings for anomalies and signs of distress.
“Physically, if you had to move from bed to bed checking patients, that would be impossible,” Zubrow said. “We?re not taking the place of bedside doctors. This is an additional layer of care.”
Rural hospitals have the hardest time recruiting intensive-care physicians because few hospitals can afford to be staffed around the clock, he said.
“You can?t get phone calls around the clock 365 days a year for very long without burning out,” Zubrow said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
