Critical Care Medicine

The Critical Care Unit at Lakeland Medical Center, St. Joseph, is an 18-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.

Progressive Care
The Progressive Care Unit at Lakeland Medical Center, St. Joseph, serves as a mid-step in care between the critical care unit 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 (10 beds) offers a multi-disciplinary approach to care in a less intensive setting.

Intensivists
Since the early 1990s, the existence of intensivists as part of a hospital's critical care team has increased. Studies have shown that morbidity and mortality rates in the critical care unit and in the hospital in general dramatically decrease in instances where care in the CCU is provided by intensivists. Hospitals with intensivists also often have shorter lengths of stay in the critical care unit and a smaller number of unnecessary critical care admissions.

Lakeland Medical Center, St. Joseph began an intensivist program more than eight years ago. Currently there are four intensivists in the CCU. Lakeland Hospital, St. Joseph’s critical care unit 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 and are available 24/7.

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 12-bed critical care unit 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 critical care 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 critical care team. It has provided positive improvement results in the areas of quality, patient safety and employee satisfaction.