eICU Program

Regional Health is committed to bringing the best Intensive Care Unit technology to patients in the Black Hills region. At Rapid City Regional Hospital, the advanced technology of the eICU® Program will benefit critically-ill patients in the Intensive Care Unit.

What is eICU? (video)

The eICU® Program enhances the around-the-clock support that monitors a patient's vital signs. The latest in telemedecine, eICU® connects critical care experts with ICU patients at both Rapid City Regional Hospital and Spearfish Regional Hospital.

Improving Critical Care

An eICU program is a patient monitoring system which allows an additional team of experts to observe and evaluate critically ill patients in multiple ICUs and hospitals from a single location. It is staffed with experienced specialty trained physicians and nurses. Advanced technology helps the eICU monitoring team continually scrutinize clinical, physiological, and laboratory data of patients in the monitored ICUs. The technology has the capacity to detect very early changes in a patient’s condition, which then allows the hospital-based team to optimize health care interventions for the patient.

Following the implementation of Regional Health’s eICU Program, Regional Health physicians and nurses will continue to oversee and provide direct patient care in the ICU as they have always done, and they will now also have the support of Sioux Falls health system Avera’s eICU CARE team and additional monitoring when intensivists are not on-site. The Avera eICU CARE team will include physicians and critical care nurses who will work in the background, providing the bedside staff with additional support by continuously monitoring patients and providing assistance as requested.

At Rapid City and Spearfish regional hospitals, the eICU® Program was made possible through a grant from The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust. You can read the full Feb. 17, 2010, story here: News release