When you or a loved one is admitted to the hospital’s medical-surgery unit (med-surg), St. Luke’s University Health Network has an award-winning extra layer of care.
All med-surg units at St. Luke’s use a proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) tool to predict, identify and rapidly address the needs of its admitted or under-observation patients to reduce unanticipated transfers to the ICU – and save lives.
It’s like a superhero sidekick: AI that watches over people in the hospital every second of every day, awake or sleeping.
This tool looks at metrics such as heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, lab work, patient age and nursing documentation in real time at all 16 St. Luke’s campuses.
The information is transmitted to the St. Luke’s Virtual Response Center, which is staffed by a team of registered nurses who, depending upon a patient’s deterioration score, can alert the patient’s bedside nurse, a nursing supervisor, or in the more rapidly deteriorating patients, alert St. Luke’s rapid response team (RRT) to identify and treat patients early, before they require transfer to the ICU or have a sudden cardiac arrest in the med-surg unit.
Earlier this year, St. Luke’s utilization of the AI tool called Epic’s Deterioration Index was recognized by The Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania (HAP) with a 2025 “In Safe Hands” Achievement Award” for the initiative that provided significant measurable gains in operational, quality and financial metrics while reducing cardiac arrest events, overall morbidity and mortality.
This proactive approach led to a 34% reduction in cardiac arrests and a 12% drop in rapid response transfers to the ICU, with survival rates climbing from 24% to 36%.
Beyond clinical outcomes, the Deterioration Index predictive model has helped to deliver measurable budgetary impact, saving $1.75 million in 2024 by avoiding unnecessary ICU transfers.
“Humans could essentially calculate these risk scores,” said Julie Tanhauser, Information Technology Strategic Planner at St. Luke’s, “but we can’t continuously do it every second for every patient among hundreds of patients on our 16 campuses. That’s your AI piece.”
The Deterioration Index transforms patient safety through predictive analytics.
Today, the initiative is deeply embedded in St. Luke’s workflow for physicians, nurses and advanced practitioners so they are alerted immediately when a patient’s Deterioration Index score crosses critical thresholds before something goes critically wrong, allowing providers and nurses a chance to intervene faster with the proper treatment.
As part of the Network’s broader AI strategy, the Deterioration Index exemplifies how machine learning can be responsibly integrated into care delivery, improving outcomes while still preserving and enhancing clinician judgment.
This initiative has enhanced patient care outcomes by improving survival rates, diminishing unexpected ICU transfers, and lowering code blue (cardiac arrests) incidents over a period of three fiscal years.
About St. Luke’s
Founded in 1872, St. Luke’s University Health Network (SLUHN) is a fully integrated, regional, non-profit network with annual net revenue of more than $4.5 billion. With 23,000+ employees at 16 hospital campuses and 350+ outpatient sites, it is the Lehigh Valley’s biggest employer.
The Network’s service area includes 11 counties in two states: Lehigh, Northampton, Berks, Bucks, Carbon, Montgomery, Monroe, Schuylkill and Luzerne counties in Pennsylvania and Warren and Hunterdon counties in New Jersey. St. Luke’s hospitals operate the largest network of trauma centers in Pennsylvania, with the Bethlehem Campus being home to St. Luke’s Children’s Hospital.
Dedicated to advancing medical education, St. Luke’s is the preeminent teaching hospital in central-eastern Pennsylvania. In partnership with Temple University, the Network established the Lehigh Valley’s first and only four-year medical school. It also operates the nation’s oldest School of Nursing, established in 1884, and 50+ fully accredited graduate medical educational programs with 500+ residents and fellows.
St. Luke’s has been named a Leapfrog Group and Healthgrades Top Hospital and a Newsweek World’s Best Hospital. It is the only Lehigh Valley-based health care system to earn Medicare’s five-star ratings (the highest) for quality, efficiency and patient satisfaction. In 2025, the Network earned straight A’s from Leapfrog across all of its 11 acute care hospitals. It has earned 100 Top Hospital designations from Premier 11 years in a row, including in 2021 when its flagship University Hospital was identified as THE #1 TEACHING HOSPITAL IN THE COUNTRY. Utilizing the Epic electronic medical record (EMR) system for both inpatient and outpatient services, the Network is a multi-year recipient of the Most Wired award recognizing the breadth of SLUHN’s information technology applications such as telehealth, online scheduling and online pricing information.
Information provided to TVL by:
Gary Blockus
