Topic: Technology

KLAS Recognizes 2022 Emerging Healthcare Solutions Top 20

KLAs top 20 emerging solutions badge

“With staffing being one of the biggest issues for operations today, AvaSure makes a lot of sense because it is a force multiplier. Rather than having one sitter watch one patient, a unit can have one sitter watch twelve patients with remote monitoring.”
—Non-customer C-level/executive

This report includes the top 20 emerging solutions that have the greatest potential to disrupt the healthcare market ranked by healthcare leaders across the country

Healthcare executives are overwhelmed by the flood of new technologies in healthcare and can miss an amazing new technology partner because they are lost in the crowd. To solve this problem, KLAS has pulled together a group of provider thought leaders from around the country to help KLAS select the Top 20 Emerging Solutions that are disrupting the healthcare market.

In addition to rating the emerging solutions, our provider thought leaders also gave their input on technology innovation that address the quadruple aim of healthcare; Improve Care and Outcomes, Reduce the Cost of Care, Improve Patient Experience, and Improve Provider Satisfaction.

Read the press release and the KLAS news release to learn more. 

AvaSure User Update

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AvaSure

Improved Reporting of Adverse Events in ORNA®

AvaSure’s latest software release (Version 1.1.12.X) provides significant new features that improve communication of adverse events and allow key stakeholders to determine which events should be included in ORNA® data and reporting.

Details of suspected adverse events can be reported by monitor staff via the AvaSure TeleSitter® software, which generates emails to assigned administrators, who review the reports to determine whether events jeopardized the safety of patients/staff. Validating adverse events provides more actionable and accurate data for ORNA reports, which lead to improved processes to avert future such events.

Hospital IT is needed to configure the outgoing email server’s Notifications settings. Designated event validator(s) need to be added to the export user group through the AvaSure administrator panel. AvaSure recommends assigning this role to a minimum of two users, which allows more efficient validation in the case of time off or a user changing roles in the organization.

You must also define the adverse events you would like to track and establish them in the notifications setting. By default, assisted and unassisted falls are selected; however, a range of other adverse events can be added.

For more information on this software feature, contact info@avasure.com.

2-Way TeleSitter®

With the advent of two-way video on our 2-way Guardian® devices, AvaSure has been used for a variety of telehealth purposes. Now, new capabilities in our latest software allow monitoring staff and frontline staff to establish instant video communication. Use of this functionality has a number of implications for care delivery:

  • By being able to see the monitor staff, nurses are reminded that another set of eyes is always on their patient, which increases staff buy-in for remote safety monitoring, driving up utilization.
  • Family members are encouraged seeing there is a real person on the other end of the room unit and can take time off from caring for their loved ones.
  • This system helps traumatic brain injury patients who might be disturbed by voice with no video.

Two-way video access for monitor staff is determined by clinical leadership and set in AvaSure Administrator Panel®. Depending on the settings selected in AvaSure Administrator Panel, monitor staff may have the option to toggle two-way video on and off.   To find out more about the 2-way TeleSitter® feature or the Guardian® 2-way mobile device contact your AvaSure sales representative or click here.

AvaSure Enhances Online Reporting Software, Allows Like-Hospital Data Comparison

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Online Reporting of Nursing Analytics

MUSKEGON, Mich., March 2, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — AvaSure, a leading provider of virtual patient safety monitoring systems, today announced new features of its Online Reporting of Nursing Analytics (ORNA®) software.

ORNA®, AvaSure’s unique comparative database on safety, quality and the experience of care, provides a real-time dashboard for day-to-day clinical triage; hospital-specific data to investigate adverse events; and the ability to run comparison reports with similar hospitals.

The updated software – available early 2021 – allows for comparisons of performance to be more focused, helping to improve outcomes through its TeleSitter® Solution. TeleSitter, an interactive audio/video solution, allows hospitals and other clinical care environments to monitor inpatients to prevent patient harm, protect staff from violent patients and visitors, and enhance nursing resources.

“ORNA® now enables users to run their own comparisons on utilization and alarm rates, and monitor staff interventions and their effectiveness, as well as bedside staff responsiveness,” said Lisbeth Votruba, MSN, RN, chief clinical innovation officer of AvaSure. “Users can compare data with similar organizations nationally or regionally, by market type and filtered by care units or specific groups. This allows the user to educate, evaluate and optimize performance of their TeleSitting program – to see how they stack up relative to similar hospitals.”

Read the full article.

Experts Say Telehealth and Virtual Medicine Are the Future of Healthcare

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Leaving a loved one for a stay at the hospital can be tough. Are they getting the attention and the care they really need if a family member or a friend isn’t there with them to call the nurse? But through advances in virtual health, West Michigan based AvaSure is working to bring assistance to patients and peace of mind to their families.

Read the full article to learn more.

Breaking the Glass Ceiling in Healthcare Technology is a Slow and Steady Process

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For years, women in healthcare technology—in fact, the technology field altogether—were more of an anomaly than the norm. Today, they are still in the minority when it comes to executive leadership in the field but opportunities for women in healthcare technology are increasing. A new generation of technology leaders will continue to push healthcare forward in the years ahead, bringing with them a strong technical background and a potentially different take on addressing current and future issues.

Fawn Lopez, publisher of Modern Healthcare and vice president of Crain Communications, sat down with four female leaders in healthcare technology to discuss the path they’ve taken to get to their current positions as well as the road ahead.

Read the full article to learn more.

Modern Healthcare Feature: Systemness Across the Care Continuum

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Systemness can improve the patient experience, lower costs, reduce risk and provide insights into a range of care and management issues. But aligning services and practices across a wide range of facilities, employees and care can be a challenge. There’s no questioning the priority that systemness holds for today’s hospitals and health systems—especially in this era of COVID-19. But what are the perceived benefits and obstacles? And what is needed to continue to move the process forward successfully?

Fawn Lopez, publisher of Modern Healthcare and vice president of Crain Communications, sat down with leaders in healthcare to discuss systemness and the paths they’ve taken in their current positions, as well as the road ahead.

Read the full article to learn more.

With Medical Errors Persisting, Why Aren’t Cost-Effective Safety and Quality Solutions Gaining More Traction?

patient in hospital bed

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…

Read the full article here. 

Alarm Fatigue Solved by the AvaSure TeleSitter® Solution’s Stat Alarm

nurse on computer using AvaSure virtual care

My wife and I used to live near a commuter rail line in suburban Chicago. When we first bought our home, the relative tranquility of our street was interrupted regularly by the thunderous noise and not insignificant shaking caused by the locomotives as trains sped by. I would be awakened repeatedly in the early hours of each day, even weekends, to the point where I wondered if we had made a huge mistake buying a home in that area.

Within a few months, however, what had been a hazard to our health hadn’t just dissipated, it had vanished. The trains still made the same noise, but we had acclimated to it so completely that when friends came over and asked how we dealt with the racket, we would pause for a second to figure out what they were referring to. The only time we noticed the trains was when the engineer would blow the massive horn to alert a car or somebody on foot trying to beat the gates going down at a nearby grade crossing. A few times in our town, which has multiple train crossings, somebody failed to make it over the tracks in time, with fatal result.

This is the experience of the hospital. Patients and visitors, in an unfamiliar environment, are always hyperaware of the din around them, replete with moaning patients, creaking wheels on carts, hallway conversations among staff and, most irritatingly, the incessant beeping of the many alarms on medical equipment, especially IV pumps. The staff are like my wife and I with our locomotive neighbors, completely acclimated to the point where many alarms go unnoticed, or else so irritated by the louder ones that they turn off the alarm function, even on cardiac monitors. It is what is known as alarm fatigue, and it is completely understandable.

The Joint Commission, which has sounded the alarm about alarm fatigue on more than one occasion, found that on one critical care unit, 150 to 400 physiologic monitoring alarms were sounding per patient per day. With 12 patients on the unit, and using the midpoint of the number of alarms, a nurse on a 12-hour shift would hear more than two alarms per minute or 137 an hour.

This is why when I have mentioned the AvaSys Stat Alert alarm to healthcare people who are unfamiliar with our system, they roll their eyes. “Not another alarm no one could miss,” you can almost hear them thinking. Then I say, “Let me tell you, this is one alarm you will respond to,” and I do so with certainty.

One reason is the sound. The AvaSys Stat Alert is loud and quite frankly irritating. It leaves no doubt it is not another IV alarm signaling an empty saline drip. It is designed not to sound like other alarms.

The Stat alert is a validated alarm, meaning a monitor tech has sounded it because of an immediate threat to the health of a patient (or, on occasion, a nurse or tech threatened by a patient or visitor). The alert is activated less than once per shift. On units with AvaSys, staff know to start running when they hear it, because they can often avert serious harm if they get to the room in time. The average response time to a Stat alert is 14 seconds. For those who know about alarm response times, that is very, very fast.

AvaSys has another role to play in reducing alarm fatigue. The monitor tech often can see if an alarm going off is because a saline bag is empty or a pulse oximeter has slipped off, giving nurses the opportunity to prioritize their responses. Conversely, monitor techs have seen patients in real distress and have sounded the Stat alert at the same time they call the nursing station to let them know another alarm has gone off for good reason.

AvaSys won’t solve alarm fatigue, but it sure helps in those rooms where it is deployed, and not just when patients are trying to get out of bed when they shouldn’t. The Stat Alert is like that train horn, ensuring that even those who can’t hear the routine alarms anymore know that there is good reason to pay attention.

Todd Sloane has consulted with AvaSure on communications and marketing since 2012.