Christopher Veremakis

Medical Director, Mercy SafeWatch and Telehealth Services

In 2006, when Mercy began its first telehealth initiative, Dr. Chris Veremakis became medical director of Mercy SafeWatch, the largest single-hub remote electronic ICU in the country. This tele-ICU monitors over 400 ICU beds in Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas and Arkansas. In 2009, he gave up his bedside critical care practice to become a medical director of Telehealth Services.

Previously, Dr. Veremakis was chair of Critical Care Medicine at Mercy Hospital St. Louis, a 980-bed independent teaching hospital and Level I trauma center in suburban St. Louis, Mo., from 1984-2009. During that time, he built a Critical Care Medicine department that currently numbers 18 full-time intensivists who assume primary management of adult medical and surgical ICU patients in over 80 ICU and step-down beds.

A lifelong physician educator, Dr. Veremakis is a clinical professor of medicine at Saint Louis University and served as program director for the Saint Louis University/Mercy Hospital St. Louis Critical Care Subspecialty Residency from 1985-1994. From 1994-2000, he was a member of the ABIM CCM certification test committee and in 2006 began a six year term on the ACGME’s institutional review committee. He also is an active member of the board of directors of Mid America Transplant Services.

Dr. Veremakis graduated from Saint Louis University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Mo. in 1975. He completed his residency in Internal Medicine at Mercy Hospital St. Louis and completed his subspecialty residency in Critical Care Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh in 1980. He achieved board certification in Internal Medicine (1979), Critical Care Medicine (1987) and Neurocritical Care Medicine (2011).