Rural Maryland hospitals, backed by a grant from a large insurer, are expected to announce a program to ensure access to critical care physicians by residents in rural areas of the state.
The program, announced Monday morning in Washington D.C., will form Maryland eCare, a collaboration of independent hospitals in the state to establish an intensivist model of care for patients.
Those in the collaborative say the model is backed by evidence of improved survival rates, shorter hospital stays and reduced costs.
The program is backed by a multi-million-dollar grant from CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield and will involve a combination of medicine and technology, organizers say.
CareFirst, an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, offers health insurance products and administrative services to more than 3.2 million individuals and groups in Maryland, northern Virginia and the District of Columbia.
Participants in the announcement included Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), majority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives; Chet Burrell, president and CEO of Maryland CareFirst; James Xinis, president and CEO of Calvert Memorial Hospital; Thomas Lawrence, MD, board chairman of Maryland eCare and chief medical officer at Peninsula Regional Medical Center; Marc Zubrow, MD, medical director of Maryland eCare; and Julie Blackburn, clinical manager of critical care at Washington County Health System.