Dartmouth Health Connected Care Center for Telehealth is expanding its partnership with Androscoggin Valley Hospital (AVH), a member of North Country Healthcare (NCH), a nonprofit affiliation of four medical facilities in New Hampshire’s White Mountains Region, to provide intensive care services to patients via telemedicine.
Dartmouth Health TeleICU (intensive care unit) provides around-the-clock patient monitoring which will enable AVH to care for critically ill patients locally. Using high-quality interactive audiovisual technology, Dartmouth Health’s TeleICU program partners board-certified intensivists and critical care nurses with bedside teams to provide real-time care, support, monitoring and clinical consults. In addition, advanced analytics allows the TeleICU team to monitor trends in patient vital signs and acuity metrics, enabling earlier intervention when problems arise.
"We are pleased to extend AVH’s telemedicine partnership with Dartmouth Health to include intensive care services,” North Country Healthcare Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer Brian O’Hearn, MBA, BSN, CEN, said. “Providing 24/7 monitoring and access to the expertise of Dartmouth Health specialists only enhances the quality of care already available at AVH, and demonstrates our commitment to maintaining local access to critical care for people throughout our rural region."
In addition to TeleICU, Dartmouth Health partners with AVH to provide TeleEmergency, TeleNeurology, TelePsychiatry, TeleICN (intensive care nursery), and TelePharmacy services. NCH member hospitals Weeks Medical Center in Lancaster and Upper Connecticut Valley Hospital in Colebrook also partner with Dartmouth Health to offer TeleEmergency and other services, all designed to enable patients to receive the best possible care close home.
“Dartmouth Health recognizes the unique challenges to ensure health care delivery for patients located in the most rural areas of the region and is very pleased to expand our telehealth relationship with AVH to now support intensive care services,” Dartmouth Health Connected Care Medical Director Kevin Curtis, MD, MS. “Our critical care clinicians will work collaboratively with the outstanding team in Berlin to care for patients in their own community, where they are most comfortable and can be supported by loved ones.”
At AVH, Dartmouth Health clinicians utilize remote monitoring and two-way, interactive audio and video technology to support and assist the local clinicians in critical situations, allowing patients to receive enhanced specialty care.
The 24/7 support of TeleICU helps keep patients and families closer to home by supporting clinical decision making and providing additional expert evaluations and recommendations.
To learn more about Dartmouth Health Connected Care, visit dartmouth-hitchcock.org/connected-care.
About Dartmouth Health
Dartmouth Health, New Hampshire’s only academic health system and largest private employer, serves patients across New England. Dartmouth Health provides access to more than 2,300 providers in nearly every area of medicine, delivering care at its flagship hospital, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) in Lebanon, NH. Its network of hospitals, outpatient centers, clinics and home care facilities, spans a broad geographical area. Year after year, DHMC is named the #1 hospital in New Hampshire by U.S. News & World Report, and is consistently recognized for high performance in numerous clinical specialties and procedures. Dartmouth Health includes Dartmouth Cancer Center, northern New England’s only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers and one of less than than 60 total nationally; Dartmouth Health Children’s, which includes the state’s only children’s hospital (Children’s Hospital at DHMC/CHaD) and more than 20 locations around the region; eight member hospitals in Lebanon, Keene, Claremont, Hampstead, and New London, NH, and Windsor and Bennington, VT; Dartmouth Health Home Care; Dartmouth Health Connected Care Center for Telehealth, serving patients as far away as Texas; and more than 30 primary and multi-specialty clinics across New Hampshire and Vermont. Through its partnership with Dartmouth College, Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine and the White River Junction VA Medical Center, Dartmouth Health trains nearly 400 medical residents and fellows annually and performs cutting-edge research and clinical trials with international impact. Dartmouth Health and its more than 16,000 employees are committed to serving the healthcare needs of everyone in the communities it serves and to providing every patient with exceptional, state-of-the-art, personalized care. Learn more at dartmouth-health.org.