Sentara Potomac Hospital Question

[bunsterj]

Sentara Potomac Hospital in Woodbridge has a Progressive Care Unit as well as an Intermediate Care Unit. What is the difference between the two. I have searched their website, and cannot find the information. I thought Progressive Care and Intermediate Care were fairly similar, but they have each.

Thanks.

[bowlofsurreal]

I currently volunteer at Potomac. I know they have an in patient and an out patient pcu. I'm not sure if that is the distinction their website is trying to make or not. I volunteer in the out patient pcu, which is in a separate building from the main hospital.

Hope this is helpful,

Kris

[Roland82]

Sentara Potomac has a 40 bed Progressive Care Unit (PGU) as of September 1st 2010. They just changed floors and upgraded from 24 beds. They also have a 15 (I think) bed Intermediate Care Unit (IMCU) that sees patients that fall between PCU and ICU. I work in the ED at Sentara Potomac so understand that the following opinions are from an outsiders viewpoint. However, I have worked in many different versions of PCU so I am familiar with their function and forms.

The PCU unit at this time would be comparable with most Med-Tele Units in the united states. The sicker patients are almost always kept in the IMCU or even boarded in the ICU. While most PCU's are used to taking patients that are post cardiac cath or have titrating cardiac drips for pretty stable patients, none of these would go to PCU at Sentara Potomac. They even have discriminators that rule out most dialysis patients because of chronically elevated Troponins and BNP's. So the patient population is very vanilla and safe. This creates over crowding in the IMCU and ICU and frequent moves for the patient during their hospital stay.

That being said, I see great changes on the horizion. This manager is fantastic and is committed to upgrading the status quo. New plans are underway to turn the current diagnostic cath lab into an interventional lab which will mean the sicker cardiac patients will be staying here instead of being sent to another facility. Sentara has given Potomac the ability to grow and prosper instead of living on the fringe like we did for so long.