Building the world's largest tele-critical care network for Veterans and service members

For more than 50 years, Philips has worked closely with the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), with over 50% of all VA Hospitals or VISNs using Philips imaging solutions and over 35% using Philips critical care systems. Today, Philips continues to collaborate with the DOD, VA and academic partners to drive innovations like virtual care and telehealth that can better support care for troops, as well as bring care closer to home for our nation’s Veterans.

VA is the largest integrated healthcare system in the U.S., consisting of more than 1,700 sites and serving nearly nine million veterans each year. It has become a leader in developing telehealth services in order to improve access to care. This is particularly important as VA continues to seek ways to increase access to services for the 2.7 million Veterans who reside in rural areas and rely on VA for care.

In 2020 VA awarded a contract to Philips to expand its Tele-Critical Care program, creating the world’s largest system to provide Veterans remote access to intensive care expertise, regardless of their location. Philips tele-critical care solution, eICU, enables clinicians at a “monitoring center” or “hub” to remotely monitor, consult, and care for ICU patients in multiple and distant satellite centers. By increasing the number of ICU patients that critical care teams can manage, tele-critical care extends both the productivity and the reach of intensivists. The VA’s tele-critical care program helps offer constant assessment and care for veterans during peak times as well as during off-hours, and helps expand access to specialized care to remote locations.

As part of an overall telehealth program, eICU enables a co-located team of specially trained critical care physicians and nurses to remotely monitor patients in the ICU regardless of patient location. With VA managing 1,800 ICU beds nationwide, eICU not only gives patients access to specialists, but also helps them deliver on the Quadruple Aim: optimizing care costs, enhancing clinician and patient satisfaction and improving outcomes. Research has shown that patients in eICU settings spend less time in the ICU and have better outcomes. Moreover, family members can talk to clinicians via integrated audio and video technology to support decision making.

Patients who receive their ICU care from a hospital with an eICU^® program:

The DOD’s Defense Health Agency is a joint, integrated Combat Support Agency that enables the Army, Navy, and Air Force medical services in both peacetime and wartime. It manages more than 700 hospitals and clinics, caring for approximately 9.6 million service members, retirees and their families.

The magnitude and complexity of the current military health system requires innovations to help standardize, and improve, the level of care delivered to patients across hundreds of facilities. DOD has collaborated with Philips to strengthen its health delivery capabilities and address its most pressing challenges, including insufficient levels of critical care physician manpower required to staff all Garrison Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds, and a lack of real-time monitoring and predictive analytics tools for modernized care practices.

This is why DOD prioritized enterprise Tele-Critical Care to best manage its expansive care delivery network. Tele-critical care provides reliable and rapid care, expanding the ability to provide high-acuity care to a larger number of patients. Deploying this approach, creating hubs around the world that can reach out to local sites and enabling remote patient monitoring, is a key step to delivering “care anywhere.” The care anywhere model will allow smaller facilities with limited staff to obtain support from a robust, global network, ultimately optimizing their level of care.