NEWS RELEASE

Contact: Jill E. McCormick, Director, Marketing & Planning
St. Edward Mercy Health System
Phone: 479-314-6037
Email: jill.mccormick@mercy.net

eICU Mobile Unit Coming to St. Edward Mercy

Fort Smith, Ark. – January 16, 2009- St. Edward Mercy will host an eICU workstation demonstration at 10 a.m. on Friday, January 23. With the mobile eICU workstation on site, both sides of the eICU equation can be seen -- the bedside care as well as the Mercy SafeWatch voice, data and video monitoring capabilities.

The media is invited to attend the eICU workstation demonstration. Those interested in attending should meet Jill McCormick, director of marketing and planning, at the main lobby of Inpatient Visiting at St. Edward Mercy Medical Center.

St. Edward Mercy began the Mercy SafeWatch eICU program in March 2007. Mercy SafeWatch is an innovative telemedicine program that connects our critical care patient rooms to a centralized intensive care unit (eICU). This electronic ICU is staffed around the clock by physicians who specialize in critical care medicine, called intensivists, and highly-trained nurses.

The Sisters of Mercy Health System operates the largest single-hub electronic intensive care unit (eICU) in the world, with 400+ monitored beds across 10 hospitals located in four states. The daily census of beds monitored varies from approximately 300 to more than 400. The Mercy SafeWatch Command Center is housed within St. John’s Mercy Heart and Vascular Hospital on the campus of St. John’s Mercy Medical Center in St. Louis, Missouri.

The Mercy SafeWatch Command Center is staffed with a team of highly qualified intensivists and experienced critical care nurses. Dr. Christopher Veremakis, Mercy SafeWatch Medical Director, leads the team of intensivists and has been part of St. John’s Mercy’s nationally recognized critical care subspecialty training program for more than 25 years. Wendy Deibert, an experienced critical care nurse, is the Mercy SafeWatch Operations Director who supervises critical care nurses recruited from throughout the Mercy System.

More information about eICU benefits and staffing will be available at the demonstration.

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