This article from Parade Magazine June 22, 2008 features Dr. Marc Zubrow who was a guest on our 7th podcast.

Long-Distance Doctors

The next doctor who sees you could soon be 100 miles away at a video terminal, reviewing your blood work on a computer. To combat the physician shortage, clusters of American hospitals are turning to the eICU, in which a critical-care specialist in a high-tech command center can monitor up to 150 patients at multiple hospitals. In late 2005, Dr. Marc Zubrow, director of critical care for the Christiana Care Health System in Delaware, started a virtual-care program in order to handle staff limitations and improve safety at two hospitals. “In the old system, if a patient had a change in kidney function at 2 a.m., a doctor might not learn that until the next day. Now, software is constantly gathering data, and for the physician, it’s like being by the bedside.” His eICU is staffed by critical-care specialists, of which there are only 6000 in the U.S.—not enough to have one at every hospital. He adds, “We’re trying to prevent problems rather than just treat them.”

Monitoring has helped reduce death rates, but some worry that relying on virtual care and not having more physicians may end up creating more critical-care patients, because small health problems will fail to be treated before they become big ones. Phil Miller, co-author of a book on the medical-staffing deficit in the U.S., found that 200,000 additional doctors are needed in the next 12 years. Miller says that while eICUs are “useful, the only thing that will really fix the shortage is more doctors. High-tech can’t replace high-touch.”