In many medical circumstances, clinicians and caregivers may choose to not leave a patient alone. For example, a patient may present a fall risk, experience confusion and agitation, or be at risk of self-harm. In these circumstances, they are in need of 24/7 monitoring. The TeleSitter® is a critical patient supervision tool, particularly for hospitals that are understaffed or cannot afford the number of sitters that their patient load requires. They also present clear and remarkable improvements to hospital operations: they reduce costs, improve staffing allocation, and help the hospital focus costs on improving and scaling access to care.
Being able to protect our patients and offer quality care are of the utmost importance at Midland Health. In always looking at innovative ways to enhance patient safety, we created the TeleSitter® Program, a video monitoring system that gives our patients extra attention and further promotes their safety. The primary staff responsible for monitoring patients with this technology are our behavioral health assistants who are experts in this area.
AvaSure’s TeleSitter® Technology is a system that is designed to connect caregivers more closely with patients and families while improving the quality of care delivered, according to Henry Mayo officials.
This new technology is part of Henry Mayo’s “Fall Prevention Program,” which is intended to keep patients safe and allow Henry Mayo patient care associates (PCAs) to spend more time caring for patients.
“We have specific patients that meet certain criteria that don’t need a physical body present, but can use the robot services from the AvaSure product,” said Jennifer Castaldo, Henry Mayo vice president and chief nursing officer. “The TeleSitter® devices will give our nurses and PCAs more time to spend with patients, while at the same time keeping our high-risk patients safer.”
Castaldo mentioned how the need for their PCAs to be bedside with patients is becoming more of a necessity.
More than 20 years after the publication of the Institute of Medicine’s seminal report “To Err is Human” — which sought to cut preventable medical mistakes by half — progress toward safer care has been slow. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality reports that public and private efforts reduced hospital-acquired conditions by 13 percent from 2014-17, helping to prevent more than 20,000 deaths and saving $7.7 billion in healthcare costs. That’s welcome news, but given that there are as many as 400,000 preventable deaths from medical mistakes each year, we wonder why more health systems aren’t rushing to implement proven safety and quality solutions…
When a patient in the hospital requires 24/7 monitoring — due to a risk of falling, for example — someone must continually stay in the patient’s room to ensure the patient’s safety. The need for this type of service has been rising at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center because of the number of patients with a psychiatric condition or addiction, says Andy Magalee, director of nursing at the medical center. To address the demand, the hospital adopted remote video monitoring technology to create the TeleSitter® program.
The TeleSitter® program, part of the Office of Johns Hopkins Telemedicine, enables one clinical technician to monitor a dozen patients simultaneously. Portable camera units mounted on rolling IV-like poles provide live video and auditory feeds from the patients’ rooms to a central monitoring screen, where a clinical technician can watch all the monitored patients at once.
If the patient attempts to get out of bed, the clinical technician can communicate with the patient using a two-way speaker on the camera to ask the patient to wait for a nurse to arrive.
“During a small, six-week pilot test of the TeleSitter® program, there were no falls with injuries,” says Ronald Langlotz, director of nursing at The Johns Hopkins Hospital.
To ensure a patient is a good candidate for the TeleSitter® program, a patient sitter stays in the room for the first two hours of monitoring. If the patient’s nurse finds no reason for the sitter to remain in the room — such as the patient pulling at the lines connected to him or her, for example — then the sitter leaves and the patient is monitored remotely.
Between July 2017 and June 2018, Johns Hopkins Bayview saved more than $1 million through the use of technology and clinical technicians. In addition to Johns Hopkins Bayview and The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Howard County General Hospital has also implemented the TeleSitter® program.
“The success in the program is the people behind the camera,” says Langlotz. “I couldn’t be more pleased with the clinical technicians. They really own it.”
Posted on February 27, 2019 by Olivia Phillips - Uncategorized
Beacon Health Memorial Hospital Implements Successful Virtual Sitting Program: Zero Adverse Events Found in Study of 500+ Patients. In a proactive approach, Beacon Health Memorial Hospital assembled a dedicated multi-disciplinary team of frontline staff. This team thoroughly assessed their existing procedures, developed new policies, and implemented a stringent patient selection process using the Columbia Suicide Severity Risk Scale (C-SSRS) for eligibility criteria. Conducting their study across two hospitals and involving over 500 patients, their implementation of the TeleSitter solution yielded impressive results: zero adverse events reported.
AvaSure’s AvaSys Solution lowers costs, improves patient safety and enhances staff engagement.TeleSitting® is an evidence-based, data-driven, and very cost-efficient solution to provision care for patients in need of continuous observation. Read the full article to learn more.
ALBANY — The Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital Board of Directors got its first look Wednesday at a new piece of technology meant to help prevent patient falls.
The AvaSys Telesitter® program, which has 12 units between the main hospital and Phoebe North, works by putting more eyes on patients.
Equipped with an infrared camera and two-way audio, it is set up in rooms of patients identified as high risk for falls. One technician can monitor live feeds on the units from those rooms at a central station.
If a patient tries to get out of bed, the observer can interact with the patient with a reminder to wait for assistance or sound an alarm for immediate staff attention. Patients in imminent danger receive an alarm, which signals the staff to head quickly to the patient’s room.
“Within seconds, someone is in the room,” April Little, a central staff manager for Phoebe Putney Health System, said of the alarm.
