Areas of Impact: MercyOne Central Iowa Critical Care

When it comes to your health, or the health of a loved one, there is no substitute for experience. MercyOne Central Iowa offers the most advanced critical care services in central Iowa, providing high-quality, personalized care for the community.

“We care for the sickest patients in the central Iowa region,” said Neil Horning, M.D., Pulmonologist and Critical Care physician at MercyOne Des Moines Medical Center. “These patients are often gravely ill with multiple organ systems that are failing.”

“Many of our patients require multiple life-supporting devices and around-the-clock care from a large team of providers including nurses, physicians, advanced nurse practitioners, respiratory therapists and patient-care technicians to support them through these life-threatening illnesses.”

“MercyOne Central Iowa is committed to offering our patients the most advanced, highest-quality and most compassionate care possible,” Dr. Horning said.

The MercyOne Central Iowa critical care service offers a wide variety of state-of-the-art, life-saving services for life-threatening conditions such as stroke, septic shock, trauma, respiratory failure, and heart attacks. Our advanced Stroke Management Team offers the only Thrombectomy Service in Central Iowa. In this procedure our specialists are able to remove blood clots from the blood vessels in the brain that are causing a stroke using endovascular catheters, leading to improved outcomes for our patients.

For patients experiencing severe shock due to any number of conditions, such as heart attack, severe septic shock or multiple organ failure, MercyOne Central Iowa is able to offer ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation). ECMO is an external mechanical heart and lung support device that previously was only used in operating rooms, but now is used in critical care units for gravely ill patients. MercyOne Central Iowa has one of the largest ECMO program in the state.

MercyOne Des Moines Medical Center is a Level 2 Trauma Center and provides care for complex trauma patients in the critical care units. In addition, critical care has central Iowa’s only Tele-ICU program that uses real-time audio, video, and electronic monitoring to connect to a team of critical care advanced practice nurses to support the care of patients and provide guidance and support to the critical care nursing team.

“These are services that we are uniquely able to offer here at MercyOne Central Iowa because of the multidisciplinary team of specially trained physicians, nurse practitioners, nurses, respiratory therapists and patient care technicians that has been assembled,” said Dr. Horning.

The critical care service has been able to meet the challenges of the many recent unprecedented events such as the COVID-19 epidemic. The critical care team was not only able to add critical care beds and staff, but they also added new technologies and treatments while adapting existing treatments to care for these severely ill patients.

MercyOne Central Iowa critical care not only cares for patients’ medical needs, but also provides spiritual and emotional support for patients and their families with our Pastoral Care and Palliative Care services.

“We know that when patients are on life-support in intensive care units, patients can feel separated from their loved ones; we work hard every day to make sure that we help sustain the vital connection that patients have with their family, friends, and loved ones,” said Dr. Horning.

In addition to providing a vital service for our community, the critical care team also serves as a great resource for all other patient care areas at MercyOne Des Moines and West Des Moines Medical Centers and the MercyOne Medical Group (clinics).

“The critical care service is the “911 team” for the rest of the hospital,” said Dr. Horning. “We help care for patients whose status is deteriorating anywhere in the hospital through our Rapid Response Team. In addition, when there is an emergency such as a cardiac or reparatory arrest, it is the Critical Care Code Team that responds.”

Funds raised support the life-saving working being done through critical care.

“Philanthropy helps support the services, technology and equipment used to care for patients when they are at their most critically ill state and helps support, retain and hire qualified staff,” said Dr. Horning.

“We are the local resource for these state-of-the-art, innovative therapies that improve the health and wellbeing of patients and help them get better and get back to their families and their lives.”

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For more information on how you can support patients and families through Critical Care, please contact Vice President of Philanthropy at MercyOne Des Moines Foundation, Joan Bindel, at JBindel@mercydesmoines.org or 515-643-8020.