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Recovery Services
 Critical Care
The Critical Care Unit
(CCU) at Lakeland Hospital, St. Joseph is a 17-bed specialty care unit designed
for the patient who requires continuous and comprehensive intensive care.
Lakeland’s multi-disciplinary Critical Care team assures our patients access to
specialized skills and technology that address the specific needs of the
critically ill patient. The CCU at Lakeland Hospital, St. Joseph currently has
three full-time intensivists on staff who attend to the needs of more than 1,200
patients a year.
Progressive Care
The Progressive Care Unit (PCU) at
Lakeland Hospital, St. Joseph serves as a mid-step in care between the critical
care unit (CCU) and general nursing floors. It is for those patients who are too
ill for a general nursing unit yet do not require intensive care. This small
unit (8 to 11 beds) offers a multi-disciplinary approach to care in a less
intensive setting.
Intensivists
Key players in the critical care team at
Lakeland Hospital, St. Joseph are the intensivists. These specialists work
closely with the other members of the critical care team to provide patients
with ongoing, consistent care 24/7.
Lakeland Hospital, St. Joseph began an intensivist program more than eight
years ago. Currently there are three intensivists in the CCU. Lakeland Hospital,
St. Joseph’s CCU is an open system. That is, patients are admitted by their
personal physician or specialist. The intensivists provide consultative care and
leadership for the entire critical care team, coordinating the care of each CCU
patient.
The Keystone Initiative
In November 2003, Lakeland began
participating in the the Keystone ICU Project, created by Johns Hopkins Medicine
in Baltimore. The Keystone project is a quality initiative that focuses on
increasing patient safety in ICUs by combining evidence-based medicine with
quality improvement. The 17-bed CCU unit at Lakeland Hospital, St. Joseph
provides care for over 1,200 patients every year. Lakeland is one of 90
hospitals across Michigan participating in the Keystone ICU project.
The
CCU team constantly measures and collects data to show the effect the initiative
has on a patient’s length of stay and condition. Participation in the Keystone
ICU project has been a great asset to the CCU team. It has provided positive
improvement results in the areas of quality, patient safety and employee
satisfaction.
Some areas that have already demonstrated success: formulation of a policy on
assessing readiness to wean patients from the ventilator; patient sedation; and
preventing peptic ulcer and blood clots, all of which have been able to decrease
the number of days a patient stays on a ventilator from five days to three days
(approximately 40 percent).
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