Dedicated ICU management: Navigating the transition

By Stephen Matchett, MD | Chief Executive Officer, Sound Critical Care  

As patient needs become more complex and technological advancements drive new treatment possibilities, intensive care units (ICUs) must adapt to deliver the highest standards of care. For hospitals, this means investing in cutting-edge medical interventions and partnerships that help them transition to the modern best-practice of dedicated ICU management. Sound Critical Care is at the forefront of bringing coordinated leadership and clinical excellence to hospital ICUs and the patients within them. 

Traditional setbacks, modern solutions 

Due to critical care’s specificity, hospitals may rely on local pulmonary specialty groups to staff their ICUs. While highly skilled, these groups are inhibited by a few common factors. Clinicians must divide their time between the ICU and the group’s outpatient channels, and keeping up with patient demand becomes difficult. Pulmonologists can often burn themselves out trying to cover their practice and hospital duties. Local groups may also struggle to recruit and retain new, talented clinicians and can’t keep up with the growing patient demand. 

Sound Critical Care brings something different to a hospital’s ICU. By focusing solely on dedicated ICU management, we cultivate some essential needs for hospitals requiring different levels of patient care — flexibility and quality.  

Our programs are designed with flexibility in mind and adapt to a hospital’s greatest needs. For smaller or rural hospitals, this can mean supplementing patient care with tele-ICU clinicians, available 24/7, to keep our providers from stretching too thin. Sound also supports residency programs, which guarantee a consistent pool of new critical care clinicians who can provide support in the ICU. This flexibility also extends to local pulmonary groups that hospitals may already have in their ICUs. 

Sound clinicians also solely practice ICU care. Led by specially trained medical, team leadership is armed with the tactical knowledge needed to drive high-quality care and highly effective practice management. Our dedicated training focuses on improving key ICU quality factors. With only board-certified critical care clinicians seeing patients, Leapfrog Group ratings improve, and the efficient care we provide saves on costs and boosts patient experience scores in the ICUs we manage. 

Forging partnerships 

Delivering the best ICU care means doing what’s best for the hospital’s patients. Sound partnerships are forged with patient needs at the forefront, and this means involving those who have cared for patients in the ICU up to that point. 

When we meet with hospitals who utilize a local pulmonology group about a critical care partnership, we aim to involve the local pulmonary practice early and deliberately when appropriate. For some groups, it can be a relief to relinquish the day-to-day operation of the ICU to our intensivists. Not having to split time between pulmonary and critical care offers avenues to better work-life balance for local pulmonary clinicians. However, if a group is engrained in the fabric of a community’s care, arrangements are always available for providers who want to continue working in their hospital’s ICU. 

Benefits abound  

A partnership with Sound Critical Care benefits both hospitals and the local pulmonary groups within them. The hospital benefits from everything a Sound critical care program brings —experienced clinicians, world-class practices, and dedicated critical care leadership — without the explicit need to fully exclude the local pulmonary groups with a history in their ICUs. In turn, pulmonary groups experience a lowered patient burden and a continuous pool of ICU patients who are discharged to their outpatient care. If you want to learn more about what Sound Critical Care can do for your hospital, explore our program overview here.