Keith Corl is an emergency and critical care medicine physician.
His research focuses on point-of-care ultrasound, IV fluid resuscitation, and sepsis. He shares updates on LinkedIn and X.
In an early 2026 piece, I criticized the growing practice of outsourcing bedside ICU care to tele-critical care programs. I argued that replacing the in-person work of physicians, nurse practitioners (NPs), and physician assistants (PAs) with remote physicians leads to the lack of a bedside leader, shoddy exams, breaks in the continuity of care, the depersonalization of the doctor-patient relationship, and an overall degradation in the quality of ICU …
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Tele-critical care today is not what the studies actually tested
Not long ago in a community intensive care unit (ICU) in a mid-sized American city, I cared for a sick young woman who had just delivered a baby. Part of the placenta, which is supposed to be fully expelled following delivery, remained in her uterus. This condition, known as “retained products of conception,” provided an opportunity for bacteria to infect the retained tissue. The infection spread from her uterus to …
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Why tele-critical care fails the sickest ICU patients
If you’ve needed emergency care in the last few years, you probably encountered this situation: Soon after entering the emergency department, you were asked to go to a triage area in the waiting room where a doctor, nurse practitioner, or physician assistant asked you a few questions and ordered some diagnostic tests while you waited.
That’s a …
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How provider-in-triage systems in ERs compromise patient care
