Early Warnings From EarlySense Can Improve Outcomes, Cut Costs

The nursing profession is mired in quite a conundrum these days. Most RNs are attracted to the field by their desire to care for patients, but many—if not all—spend more time completing paperwork than providing treatment.

“The mantra we all learn in nursing school is ‘If it isn’t charted, it isn’t done,’ an impossible rule to satisfy,” Theresa Browne, a Pittsburgh, Pa., area registered nurse wrote in a Feb. 2 post on The New York Times Well blog titled, “Caring for the Chart or the Patient?” “Since what could be charted is infinite, I begin each shift feeling that I have already failed in my documentation…‘If it isn’t charted, it isn’t done,’ we hear. But as the paperwork demands proliferate, my worry is that if it can’t be charted, it won’t be done.”

Not necessarily. New technology designed to improve patient care also is helping RNs like Browne stay true to their nursing school mottos. EarlySense, a Waltham, Mass.-based firm with offices in Ramat Gan, Israel, has developed a contact-free patient monitoring system that executives claim will help improve nurses’ daily time management. The company unveiled its EverOn system to Europe during Medica 2011 World Forum for Medicine in Düsseldorf, Germany.

EarlySense’s EverOn system automatically and continuously records and documents patients’ cardiac, respiratory and motion parameters using a contact-free compact sensor placed under the hospital bed mattress. The sensor (which lasts about 12 months) never touches the patient but nonetheless can detect significant changes in heart rate, respiration or body motion. Patients suffering from significant pain, for example, may move around more than they should while lying in bed; the EverOn system detects such restlessness and alerts the nurse. All patient information is exhibited on a bedside monitor, at the nurse’s station and on large-screen displays in various hospital departments. Nurses also receive alerts on their handheld devices to ensure timely care.

“Changes in heart and respiratory rates are the first indicators of patient deterioration,” EarlySense CEO Avner Halperin said in a news release announcing the product. “By catching these changes early, medical teams can proactively intervene and provide care that will help keep patients out of intensive care and improve their recovery time. Both of these outcomes ultimately lead to financial benefits for the hospital as well.”

Big financial benefits, actually. Results of an evaluation in a 33-bed medical-surgical unit at a California community hospital showed that EarlySense’s monitoring system can save hospitals $54,117 per bed annually. Net savings per patient admission was projected to total $859 annually, while $266 per patient can theoretically be trimmed from hospital budgets due a 63 percent reduction in the number of days patients spend in intensive care units. The same study determined that the EverOn system helped medical teams to reduce the number of patient falls by 62 percent and hospital-related pressure ulcers by 74.7 percent. The number of patients transferred to a higher level of care fell 60.5 percent, and the average length of hospital stay dropped 13.8 percent.

“In the public healthcare system here in Germany, there are a lot of patients for very few nurses,” noted Birgit Hansen, medical marketing and communications officer for EarlySense who provided a demonstration of the technology at the company’s booth during Medica event. “It can be difficult for nurses for prioritize. This will help nurses give treatment to those who most need it at the proper time.”

The EverOn system was launched in the United States earlier this year. Hansen said the company is hoping to infiltrate European and Asian markets, where the nurse-to-patient ratio often is lopsided. While marketing efforts have primarily targeted hospitals, EarlySense executives said the EverOn system also can help improve patient care in geriatric centers, same-day surgical suites (at gastroenterologist offices, for instance) and at home.

The EarlySense monitoring system is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and has CE Mark clearance for hospital and home use.