Verizon Customer Stories
A secure fiber-optic network created and maintained by Verizon Business helps nurses like Jojo Rapipong make a difference.
Better Health Care Delivered Over Verizon Broadband
JoJo
Rapipong is one of a handful of nurses who work on the leading edge of
medicine in a quiet, second-story office space in Fairfax, Virginia.
It’s the Inova Health System’s eICU—a revolution in critical care made
possible with an extensive, secure fiber-optic network created and
maintained by Verizon Business.
Each nurse monitors 20 to
30 patients around the clock in eight critical-care units within six
Inova hospitals. During the day, four nurses sit at stations equipped
with six large computer screens that convey a host of real-time
information—including video—about individual patients.
Doctors
are on hand at night to address patients’ needs within 15 seconds of
being called by a bedside nurse. The doctors can use a video link that
can zoom in close enough to check a patient’s pupils. The network
Verizon Business designed not only helps provide cutting-edge health
care, it provides reliability and redundancy that health care
professionals demand, and the necessary security and privacy that
patients expect.
“We wanted a provider that not only
understood our business and was committed to Inova’s success, but was
someone we could strategize with about the best technology solutions
for the future,” said Phil Stiff, Inova’s director of IT
Infrastructure. “When we added it all up, only Verizon Business could
deliver everything Inova was looking for.”
Studies show
that an eICU can reduce hospital mortality for critical care patients
by 20 percent and reduce the average length of stay in an ICU by 17
percent.
“We’re here to support the nurses at bedside,”
Rapipong said, but added that sometimes the hardest part of her job is
not being able to tend to a patient herself. “There are times when I
wish I could jump in and be on the other side of the computer screen,”
she said.
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