Coordinated Care Management

May 22, 2012

EarlySense Continuous Monitoring Sends Patients Home From ICUs More Quickly



EarlySense, a provider of patient care solutions, announced today that a clinical study conducted at a Dignity Health Hospital has found that using continuous patient monitoring on those in the ICU makes their stay much shorter, according to a company press release.

Using the EarlySense contact-free monitor, the length of stay in a medical-surgical unit significantly decreased for patients initially admitted to non-ICU units, the press release reports. Even more important, it also decreased the number of days patients spent in the hospital in total.

The study was done in a 316 bed acute care hospital as a pre-post evaluation study, with the EarlySense system positioned in a 33-bed medical-surgical unit, including bed side monitors, a central nursing station display and integration with the mobile phones of the nurses, according to the press release.

The press release notes that, comparing the intervention unit to the control unit, “outcome results showed a reduction in the average stay in the ICU of just over two days (a 45.9 percent reduction), comparing the pre-intervention to the post-intervention, with a trend of a decline in the number of transfers,” resulting in “a 47.2 percent decrease in the rate of total ICU days for transfers between the pre-intervention and the post-interventions periods.”

The study also found that the length of stay of patients in the medical-surgical units was also reduced substantially following the intervention by a mean of 0.4 days, a reduction of almost 10 percent.

Another study found that continuous monitoring avoids the pitfalls of measuring vital signs only every two, four or eight hours, as is typical in most hospitals, the researchers said. In this study, which was completed in 2007, “rescue events” (a major code or STAT call) were cut almost in half, with continuous monitoring.  

"This large clinical study clearly showed that there was a substantial improvement in key outcome indicators,” said Dr. Eyal Zimlichman, a lead researcher from the Center for Patient Safety Research and Practice, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Mass., in the press release. “We believe, given the distinct trends resulting from the presence of the EarlySense system, that clinicians using the system respond to deterioration earlier and thus reduce the overall utilization of the ICU and the length of stay of patients on the medical-surgical floor."




Edited by Rachel Ramsey
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