WALTHAM, MA -- EarlySense, the market leader in proactive patient care solutions, announced the results of a study conducted in a Long Term Care Facility. The data will be presented today in a poster presentation titled: "Anticipating Bed Exit in Hospitalized Patients" at ISQua's 31st International Conference in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil.
Fall prevention is one of the most important and visible patient safety challenge medical institutions face today. Each year between 700,000 and 1,000,000 people in the United States fall while in the hospital. According to clinicians many of these falls are preventable, and their goal is to eliminate falls altogether. Patient falls are costly and add an additional $3,500 to $16,500 to the cost of treating a patient on a per fall basis. To reduce fall rates, clinical managers have requested solutions that proactively anticipate and alert upon unassisted bed exit attempts and verify timely clinician responses to these alerts. The objective of the study was to validate a novel bed-exit prediction solution and to further validate the value of timely response to alerts. The study included prospective analysis and real-time testing of the EarlySense System. An observer responded to every predictive alert and documented whether it led to an actual bed exit. The predictive indication was found to precede the events by 57-72 seconds with a positive predictive value of up to 67%. The researchers concluded that being able to predict bed exit events ahead of time will allow timely assistance and potential intervention at the bed side which will potentially prevent falls. In addition, the system's unique ability to measure and report clinician response time to alerts was used in order to analyze the value of providing such effective management tools in the hands of clinical leaders.
"Previous use of other bed exit alarm technologies to alert and prevent a patient from falling was shown to have limited success," said Dr. Eyal Zimlichman, The Center for Patient Safety Research and Practice, Brigham & Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, and Deputy Director and VP of Quality Management at Sheba Medical Center. "We have seen a reduced number of patient falls per 1,000 patient days in hospitals in which staff response time is measured, and as a result their time to the bed exit alert by EarlySense is faster. Specifically, caregivers that arrive at the bed-side and aid a patient within 50 seconds of alert activation achieve the best fall reduction results. Therefore, an algorithm that precedes the bed exit events by over 50 seconds will allow bridging over this inevitable response time and drive better results and safer patient care," continued Dr. Zimlichman.
"We are working with numerous healthcare facilities, some were experiencing 4-5 falls per month in a given care area, and after implementation of the EarlySense System, and educating staff about the importance of response times to a bed exit alert, these rates have been reduced to in some cases less than 1 fall per month. The EarlySense System is unique, in that it allows caregivers to titrate bed exit sensitivity to a particular patient, and track the alert response time to the bedside or chair of a patient. This complete solution gives caregivers the confidence that they can provide safe and efficient care by being at the patients' side before they exit the bed or chair," stated Tim O'Malley, President of EarlySense Inc.
For more information, visit http://www.earlysense.com