Sarah Nelson, BS, MD, MPH
Neurointensivist
Mount Sinai Health System
New York, NY
Disclosure information not submitted.
Jon Steuernagle, MD
Dr.
Johns Hopkins University, United States
Disclosure information not submitted.
Paul Nyquist, MD, MPH
Dr.
Johns Hopkins University, United States
Disclosure information not submitted.
Jose Suarez, MD, FNCS, FANA, FAAN
Professor of Anesthesiology, Critical Care Medicine, Neurology and Neurosurgery
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, United States
Disclosure information not submitted.
Wendy Ziai, MD, FRCPC
Professor
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Maryland, United States
Disclosure information not submitted.
Title: COVID-19 and Telehealth in the Intensive Care Unit Setting: A Survey
INTRODUCTION: The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in major changes in the way healthcare is delivered. Use of telemedicine in the inpatient setting, particularly in the ICU, has not been well-explored but has gained importance given visitor restrictions, convenience, and its potential to facilitate communication. Utilizing surveys, we examined views of telehealth in the ICU setting during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods: We conducted surveys of administrative leaders of the 5 hospitals within the Johns Hopkins Medical System, US-based members of the Neurocritical Care Society (NCS), and all members of the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) who practice adult medicine from June 2020 to July 2021.
Results: Eighteen of 22 (81.8%) Hopkins-based ICU leaders responded to the survey as did 22 of 2218 (0.01%) US-based NCS members and 136 of 13,047 (0.01%) SCCM members. The majority of respondents were medical/critical care directors (72.2%) in the Hopkins survey, and were other physicians in the NCS and SCCM surveys (45.5% and 37.5%, respectively). In April 2020, at the peak of the pandemic, the ICUs of 77.7%, 86.4%, and 93.4% of respondents, respectively, included COVID-19 patients. While prior to the pandemic 22.2%, 31.8%, and 43.7% of respondents used telehealth, in the era of COVID-19 88.9%, 77.3%, and 75.6%, respectively, have used telehealth technologies. The most common telehealth technology used was virtual meeting software, the most common interaction for which telehealth was used was interactions with patients’ families, and the most frequent reason was to provide an update on a patient’s condition. Telehealth technologies were seen as valuable in taking care of patients by 93.8% to 100.0% of respondents. 75.1%, 93.8%, and 89.0%, respectively, felt it would be useful for their ICU to continue using telehealth technologies after hospital visitor restrictions are lifted.
Conclusions: While response rates were lower for the NCS and SCCM surveys as compared to the Hopkins-based survey, common trends were that most ICUs cared for COVID-19 patients and most did not utilize telehealth prior to COVID-19 while many did following the start of the pandemic. These technologies were generally seen as valuable and likely useful for the future. Telehealth may be an important tool in facilitating healthcare moving forward.