LifeBridge Health Virtual Hospital Benefits Owings Mills Man

OWINGS MILLS, MD — When paramedics recently paid Wayne Webb a visit at home following a Northwest Hospital emergency room visit, he was uncertain why they were there. However, he was about to experience a modern house call made possible through LifeBridge Health’s Virtual Hospital, a new care model rolling out through Sinai Hospital of Baltimore.

Paramedics came into Webb’s Owings Mills home and, after setting up a computer screen, helped him talk through his symptoms with emergency medicine physician, Jonathan Thierman.
After Thierman — who was at the hospital miles away — determined what was wrong with him, Webb spent the next four days in the hospital.

Webb said he was grateful for the virtual hospital, created as a way to increase access to healthcare services. It’s also intended to improve efficiency within the organization, reduce wait times and increase patient satisfaction, according to a news release.

The virtual hospital is led by Thierman and combines the use of a clinical command center, telemedicine services and international clinical call centers to provide patients with swift, coordinated care.

“By using all these components we can coordinate visits remotely to patients in their homes, transport them to the hospital, if necessary, and find the right location in the hospital where they need care,” Thierman said. “We can also conduct virtual visits to patients in our affiliated facilities and coordinate the movements of those patients to different levels of care.”

As a way to increase access to care, the virtual hospital’s telemedicine service helps providers communicate remotely with patients through a video conferencing monitor brought by first responders when they respond to a call. The system is also used in the emergency room at Sinai and Northwest.

Thierman said the virtual hospital is currently taking on approximately 1,000 cases per month. Since January, more than 4,000 patients have the telemedicine service to connect with their providers. Since implementing the service, the time it takes for a patient to see a provider has decreased 69 percent, and the average time it takes to admit a patient to the hospital decreased by more than 90 minutes.