Physician anesthesiologists have been on the frontlines caring for COVID-19 patients throughout the country, but in New Hampshire physicians have innovated with a Tele-Intensive Care Unit (TeleICU) hub to collaborate with physicians in rural hospitals to ensure infected patients from across the state get critical care expertise at no expense while receiving care close to home.
“Anesthesiology has long been a specialty of innovation,” said Stephen Surgenor, M.D., president of the New Hampshire Society of Anesthesiologists (NHSA). “During this health care emergency, telemedicine has been a helpful way for critical care anesthesiologists to care for COVID-19 patients who wouldn’t otherwise have the ability to be seen by these specialists”
The TeleICU is a remote video technology platform that allows physicians in rural hospitals to confer with critical care specialists until the patient can be transferred to the larger hospital. These conferences take place at the patient’s bedside with the conferring physician and the physician anesthesiologist at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, NH, similar to a Zoom or Skype video call.
The guidance physicians provide to more than 20 rural hospitals includes advice on sedation and pain management, blood transfusions, ventilator and equipment management, as well as management of sepsis, shock, organ dysfunction and acute respiratory distress syndrome. With the technology and cooperation of the anesthesiologists educated and trained in critical care and crisis management, New Hampshire’s COVID-19 patients in rural areas have access to the same expertise as those in urban areas.
The effort is led by Dr. Surgenor, who is medical director for the TeleICU program at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Connected Care Center for Telehealth, which covers all the ICU beds at Littleton Regional Hospital in Littleton, NH; Cheshire Medical Center Dartmouth-Hitchcock in Keene, NH; Southwestern Vermont Medical Center in Bennington, VT, and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. Dr. Surgenor led the expansion of the TeleICU service to a number of smaller, rural New Hampshire hospitals through a cart-based program, including Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital in Lebanon, Androscoggin Valley Hospital in Berlin, New London Hospital in New London, Upper Connecticut Valley Hospital in Colebrook, Weeks Medical Center in Lancaster, Monadnock Community Hospital in Peterborough, and Huggins Hospital in Wolfeboro, and others.
ABOUT THE NEW HAMPSHIRE SOCIETY OF ANESTHESIOLOGISTS
The New Hampshire Society of Anesthesiologists (NHSA) is a state component society of the ASA with over 250 New Hampshire physician members. The NHSA supports the mission of the ASA and promotes the evidence-based best practice of medicine for patients in the Granite State. Our physicians are state and national leaders in pain management, critical care medicine, and perioperative medicine. For more information on the New Hampshire Society of Anesthesiologists, contact Catrina Watson at the New Hampshire Medical Society at 603-224-1909. Catrina.watson@nhms.org .
ABOUT THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF ANESTHESIOLOGISTS
Founded in 1905, the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) is an educational, research and scientific society with more than 54,000 members organized to raise and maintain the standards of the medical practice of anesthesiology. ASA is committed to ensuring physician anesthesiologists evaluate and supervise the medical care of patients before, during and after surgery to provide the highest quality and safest care every patient deserves.
For more information on the field of anesthesiology, visit the American Society of Anesthesiologists online at asahq.org. To learn more about the role physician anesthesiologists play in ensuring patient safety, visit asahq.org/WhenSecondsCount. Like ASA on Facebook, follow ASALifeline on Twitter.
ABOUT DARTMOUTH-HITCHCOCK
Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health (D-HH), New Hampshire’s only academic health system and the state’s largest private employer, serves a population of 1.9 million across northern New England. D-HH provides access to more than 2400 providers in almost every area of medicine, delivering care at its flagship hospital, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) in Lebanon, NH. DHMC was named in 2019 as the #1 hospital in New Hampshire by U.S. News & World Report, and recognized for high performance in 13 clinical specialties and procedures. Dartmouth-Hitchcock also includes the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Norris Cotton Cancer Center, one of only 51 NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers in the nation; the Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth-Hitchcock, the state’s only children’s hospital; affiliated member hospitals in Lebanon, Keene, and New London, NH, and Windsor, VT, and Visiting Nurse and Hospice for Vermont and New Hampshire; and 24 Dartmouth-Hitchcock clinics that provide ambulatory services across New Hampshire and Vermont. The D-HH system trains nearly 400 residents and fellows annually, and performs world-class research, in partnership with the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth and the White River Junction VA Medical Center in White River Junction, VT.
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