Clinical research studyContinuous Monitoring in an Inpatient Medical-Surgical Unit: A Controlled Clinical Trial
Section snippets
Study Site
We performed a study on a medical-surgical service in a 316-bed community hospital, using 2 control groups. The study included a 9-month prospective intervention period (November 2009-July 2010) and a 9-month retrospective baseline period (January 2009-September 2009). Monitoring was performed in a 33-bed medical-surgical unit (the “intervention” unit) whose population included general medical, trauma, and surgical patients. A similar “sister” 33-bed medical-surgical unit served as a
Results
The study population included 7643 patients, of which 2314 patients in the intervention unit were placed under continuous monitoring in the postimplementation phase. Patient demographics, acuity level on admission, and comorbidity score (Charlson) are presented in Table 1. Acuity level and age were similar across the groups, as were the Charlson scores. Overall, for the intervention unit we have recorded 585 HR alerts and 2904 RR alerts from the Earlysense monitor, or a rate of 0.06
Discussion
We evaluated a contact-less monitoring system and found the implementation of the system on a medical-surgical floor setting was associated with a lower number of ICU days for transfers, shorter overall hospital LOS in the intervention group, and a lower frequency of code blue events, although the rate of transfers to the ICU did not change significantly.
Several solutions for the need for continuous monitoring on the floors have emerged in recent years. Electrocardiographic monitoring
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Funding: The study was funded by an industry grant provided by EarlySense Inc.
Conflict of Interest: HB has received consulting fees from EarlySense LTD; JT and PV have no conflicts to report; DWB has received consulting fees and Honoraria from EarlySense LTD and has received a research grant supported by EarlySense LTD; EZ has received a research grant supported by EarlySense LTD.
Authorship: HB has contributed to conception and design, to acquisition of data, and to the analysis and interpretation of data. HB has drafted the article and gave final approval of the version to be published. JT has contributed to conception and design, to acquisition of data, has critically revised the manuscript for important intellectual content, and gave final approval of the version to be published. PV has contributed to acquisition of data, has critically revised the manuscript for important intellectual content, and gave final approval of the version to be published. DWB has contributed to conception and design, to the analysis and interpretation of data, has critically revised the manuscript for important intellectual content, and gave final approval of the version to be published. EZ has contributed to conception and design, to the analysis and interpretation of data, has drafted the article, and gave final approval of the version to be published.