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St. Anthony’s Hospital announced the opening of a new Neurology Intensive Care Unit (Neuro ICU) for patients who face some of the most complex surgeries and post-surgical treatment. The St. Anthony’s Hospital Neuro ICU is part of BayCare’s dedication to delivering clinical excellence to critical care patients across West Central Florida.
“This is step one of our pathway forward to offering more advanced services and more dedicated patient care,” said Adam Befeler, MD, medical director of the BayCare Neuroscience Institute. “What’s unique about this Neuro ICU is it’s the first within BayCare where we have the neuroscience floor, the Neuro ICU and eventually, the Epilepsy Monitoring Unit all in one location.”
The new unit is located on the second floor of the hospital’s Franciscan Pavilion, which also houses the emergency department in the same building.
With the addition of the Neuro ICU, which opened Nov. 10., St. Anthony’s Hospital now has three critical care units. St. Anthony’s Hospital joins Morton Plant and St. Joseph’s hospitals as BayCare facilities with Neuro ICUs. However, the units at Morton Plant Hospital and St. Joseph’s Hospital are hybrid and can be used for other critical care patients.
The St. Anthony’s Hospital Neuro ICU opened with four rooms but can expand to 10 rooms when needed. Additions to the unit were related to enhanced monitoring for these patients, said Jasmine Nicholas, St. Anthony’s Hospital’s director of patient services. Special critical care monitors to observe patients are located at each bedside. The rooms also are connected to BayCare’s Virtual ICU (VICU), a remote monitoring system that provides 24-hour oversight for ICU patients. St. Anthony’s Hospital also purchased ICU beds which are essential in caring for critically ill patients. The unit's renovation and additional equipment cost approximately $730,000.
Ten critical care nurses trained for about five months with the Morton Plant Hospital neuro nursing team. “This cross-collaboration assures that across our campuses, we all will be speaking the same language when it comes to care for these patients,” Nicholas said. “The training ensures that all of our patients will receive the same level of care.”
Discussions to bring the Neuro ICU to St. Anthony’s Hospital have been underway for about five years, according to Dr. Befeler. “During the past year, the idea has come to fruition through the leadership of Dr. Befeler and Trish Kiloh, the Neuro ICU’s nurse manager,” said Nicholas. “Trish has 20 years’ experience in Neuro ICU with nine of those at Morton Plant Hospital.”
Alex Woods, nurse manager for the medical/surgical/neurology portion of the unit, said the rooms also include fold-down couches so family members can stay overnight.
“They were already very well outfitted to be ICU rooms. We just had to make some tweaks,” Woods said. “Based on the volume of neuro patients we already see in ICU1, we imagine these four beds are going to be filled daily and that we’ll likely have to maneuver to use the other six ICU beds sooner rather than later.”
Indeed, St. Anthony’s Hospital President Scott Smith said that depending on the need for the services, the unit can be expanded to include all 32 rooms on the second floor of the Franciscan Pavilion. “This is the culmination of years of hard work to totally integrate a premiere group of neurosurgeons into exclusively covering St. Anthony’s Hospital,” Smith said. “For St. Anthony’s Hospital, having all our neuroscience patients in one location with one team providing all levels of care is crucial to providing extraordinary care to those patients.”
Learn more: St. Anthony’s Hospital neurosciences services
