Brookville Hospital plans to close its ICU due to low numbers of patients

December 15, 2010

Brookville Hospital

BROOKVILLE — Brookville Hospital announced this week that it will no longer offer intensive care services to extremely ill patients.

The decision to change services comes about due to little or no patient volume in the hospital’s ICU, according to hospital president and chief executive officer John Sutika.

“Our current situation is that our ICU is empty 30 percent of the time,” he said. “Another 54 percent of the time, there are only one or two patients. We have found that patients who need close monitoring, certain short-term IV medications or uncomplicated ventilator cases can be managed in our medical surgical/telemetry department. And in the rare cases where a patient needs an even higher level of care, those patients are being transferred to facilities that are more proficient at providing that level of care.”

The low volume in the ICU created a financial burden on the hospital, making it difficult to continue the trend of adding or increasing services that are needed more throughout the community.

Employees currently working in the ICU will be reallocated to other parts of the hospital where there is a need for their skills.