SCCM Resource Library-Blinders off Building the Telecritical Care Collaborative Network

Video Transcription

Hi, my name is Ben Scott. I'm an associate professor of anesthesiology and critical care at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.  I'm also outgoing chair of the SCCM Telecritical Care Committee and still a member. I'm going to talk to you today about our recent experience over the last couple of years building  the Telecritical Care Collaborative Network. I have no disclosures for this talk. I joined the SCCM Telecritical Care Committee several years ago, and I remember at the first  business meeting that I attended, both during the meeting and then afterwards in some informal conversations I had with various members of the committee, we recognized that many of  us had a general sense about the lay of the land in terms of telecritical care in this country, but we didn't have very much specific knowledge about what each of us was doing  in terms of program development, in terms of research, and more to the point, very few  of us had any significant or regular connections outside of SCCM with other leaders in telecritical care outside of our committee.  So even though SCCM was among the early leaders in telecritical care and many of the founding pioneers of the discipline have served on the Telecritical Care Committee in the past,  and SCCM has a tremendous amount of multidisciplinary expertise and also a very engaged and enthusiastic  committee, there is somewhat, has historically been a lack of continuity because people come and go off the committee after serving a term.  So there's a bit of a lack of institutional memory, and also we had a sense at that meeting  that we've tried to rectify with this project that we may be lacking a little bit of a leadership role in the national conversation outside of SCCM regarding telecritical care.  And it seems only right that this organization, which has been so instrumental in the original development of critical care, continues to play the role of a leader in helping to set  the national agenda. So that realization led to us trying to figure out some ways that we can address those issues.  So as a response to this recognition in 2020, and then again with a slightly modified strategic  proposal in 2021, a group of us on the committee proposed the creation of what we called a Telecritical Care Collaborative Network.  And the idea behind this network was basically to set up a multi-organizational national collaborative network, including leaders in the field of telemedicine critical care.  And we really envisioned this as a multidisciplinary network that would be geographically diverse  and include major stakeholders from different kinds of institutions, different geographic areas, different professional organizations, and different disciplines that could come  together to establish a forum where there would be a regular set of meetings and regular dialogue to discuss current and future issues in telecritical care and to create basically  kind of a deliberative body that could serve as an authoritative consensus-based expert voice that would drive innovation, that would help extend best practices and identify best  practices in telecritical care. And the idea was that SCCM really should, you know, kind of take its natural role as  a leader in telecritical care and make sure that its members are well represented when any, you know, as I said, any time that there were important decisions or discussions about  policy, about compensation, about best practice, about the structure of telecritical care. As part of our strategic proposal, in order to try and explain the idea behind what we  were proposing to the SCCM Council and also to the SCCM members who might hear about or read about what we were doing, we identified several areas of focus to highlight the ways  that we thought this kind of a network could be useful. We thought that in particular it would be interesting and important for us to discuss  and potentially make recommendations or deliberate on technical and infrastructure considerations,  things like device integration, interoperability, encouraging open standards, discussions about regulatory billing and compliance issues.  As I've said, one of the key and I think most important potential goals of this kind  of a group would be to help establish consensus-driven standards for best practice, as well as enhancing  and informing national and international emergency preparedness programs, using and harnessing telecritical care to try and enhance family presence, to improve access to care.  And then also some other things like establishing criteria for creating a healthy work environment  for TCC programs and for TCC clinicians, and to support and foster telecritical care research,  including updating and expanding and helping to guide the telecritical care research agenda. From the beginning, we have been very focused on both the need to make this project very  concrete and also to provide ourselves with some clear milestones and ways we can measure success of the proposal.  Phase one is already complete, and phase one was the preliminary work of gaining approval for the strategic proposal, which happened in 2021.  We then went on to try to identify a network planning group. This group was initially made up of SCCM representatives, members of the Telecritical  Care Committee, who are listed below, and then modeling ourselves a little bit to start after the Critical Care Collaborative Societies, we included or invited reps from each of the  other member organizations of the CCSC. And those people have joined us in regular meetings to come up with the next stages of  this project, and we were also able to receive approval of the project in the general spirit of the proposal from the other CCSC members.  We're currently in phase two of our project. There are really two key components of phase two. The first is the development of a network charter, the finalization of the roster by  inviting other member organizations to participate in establishment of a regular meeting cadence for this group.  In the meantime, we have also been meeting every other week for well over a year now with our planning committee, and we had an extensive debate or discussion at the beginning  of this process about whether creation of the network itself was the first goal or whether  we should very rapidly try to move to producing a deliverable that would demonstrate the value of what we're doing, and we decided to try to do both at the same time.  So while we've been building the network itself, we've also started a process to use  a modified Delphi protocol to create a consensus-based practice recommendation for best practices in telecritical care.  As most of you probably know, the data and evidence base for telecritical care is not robust enough to develop anything like a clinical guideline, but we have come up with a pretty  robust panel of experts and leaders in the field to join our panel, and we anticipate that we will be able to provide a fairly definitive and authoritative document outlining some  of the generally agreed-on best practices in telecritical care. Phase three represents the aspirational future of the program.  We are hopeful that we're building a durable and self-sustaining network that will be around for many years to come.  We anticipate the agenda will be set by the members in the future, but some projects that we think are important to consider include the development of some tools for assessment  and possibly accreditation of telecritical care programs, expansion of resources for programs as they try to develop, expansion of educational tools and provider training  resources, continued support of national and international efforts to use telecritical  care to improve access to care and to respond to disasters and provide care in austere environments  where it's not otherwise available, and ultimately to do things like establish a multi-center research network for telecritical care to try and help improve the evidence base that  we're working with and move us beyond the current reliance on expert opinion. So with that, I'll wrap up my talk, and I'm happy to take questions if time allows.  Thank you very much. Please let me know if you're interested in participating.

Video Summary

Dr. Ben Scott discusses the Telecritical Care Collaborative Network, which aims to establish a national collaborative network of leaders in telemedicine critical care. The network would facilitate regular meetings and dialogue to address current and future issues in telecritical care, establish consensus-driven standards for best practice, enhance emergency preparedness programs, improve access to care, and support telecritical care research. Phase one of the project, gaining approval for the proposal, is complete, and phase two focuses on finalizing the network charter and expanding membership. The ultimate goal is to create a durable and self-sustaining network that can contribute to the improvement of telecritical care.

Asset Subtitle

Professional Development and Education, Quality and Patient Safety, 2022

Asset Caption

In this flipped-classroom session, an expert panel will discuss aspects of tele-critical care such as policy and governance, the National Emergency Tele-Critical Care Network (NETCCN), multiorganizational collaborative networks, data analytics, and quality metrics. Legal and licensing barriers to tele-critical care practice and the workings of a cloud-based virtual critical care ward will also be covered.

Meta Tag

Content Type Presentation

Knowledge Area Professional Development and Education

Knowledge Area Quality and Patient Safety

Knowledge Level Advanced

Membership Level Select

Tag Innovation

Tag Evidence Based Medicine

Year 2022

Keywords

Telecritical Care Collaborative Network

telemedicine critical care

collaborative network

best practice standards

emergency preparedness programs

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