WALTHAM, MA -- EarlySense, maker of contact-free monitoring solutions, revealed significant results of a 7,643 patient outcome study conducted by researchers from Harvard University Medical School and published at The American Journal of Medicine. Results of the study concluded that continuous monitoring with the EarlySense System on a medical-surgical unit is associated with a significant decrease in patients' total length of stay in the hospital, code blue events and intensive care unit (ICU) stay time for patients who had an intra-hospital transfer from the medical-surgical unit.
In the controlled study, the researchers compared a 33-bed medical-surgical unit (intervention unit) to a sister control unit for a 9-month pre-implementation and a 9-month post implementation period. Outcome results showed a decrease in the overall length of stay by 0.37 days, a reduction of 9%. The average stay in the ICU for patient transferred from the medical-surgical unit was significantly lower in the intervention unit post implementation by about 2 days, a 45% reduction. Furthermore, the rate of code blue events decreased by 86%.
"Early detection of patient deterioration in general care units should be a top priority for healthcare institutions," said Dr. David Bates, Director of the Center for Patient Safety Research and Practice, Senior Vice President for Quality and Safety, Chief Quality Officer, Brigham & Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. "Continuous monitoring is a key factor in recognizing and promptly responding to early warning signs which should help decrease patient morbidity and mortality, as well as length of hospital stay and costs. The study also showed the the continuous monitoring used did not cause alarm fatigue, because of the analytics used by EarlySense which "weeds out" the false positives. We have also assessed the financial impact of the intervention."
Current literature shows that in the 24 hours prior to ICU admission, as many as 80% of patients have had abnormal values for heart rate, respiratory rate and oxygenation. The EarlySense monitoring system helps facilitate timely interventions for these high-risk patients by adding a layer of care with continuous monitoring and drawing attention to those who may show early signs of deterioration.
For more information about EarlySense, visit http://www.earlysense.com