Parker Implements New
Technology to Improve
Patient Care and Reduce
Stress on Personnel
P
arker Jewish Institute for Health Care
and Rehabilitation recently acquired
state-of-the-art monitoring technology,
designed to increase patient safety, reduce falls,
bed sores/pressure ulcers, enhance quality of
care and patient outcomes. Parker’s new partner,
EarlySense, offers a patient safety solution
providing clinical personnel with the tools to
continuously monitor two of the most critical
predictors of patient adverse events - heart rate
and respiratory rate - allowing clinicians more
opportunities for early intervention.
Parker’s new technology offers continuous and
contact-free monitoring of a patient’s heart and
respiratory rates, as well as patient motion, thus
enabling clinicians to intervene promptly by
providing: early detection displays of vital sign
trends and alerts when heart and respiratory
rates are out of range (predictors of a potential
deteriorating condition); fall prevention, with six
levels of bed exiting sensitivity tailored for each
patient, thus enabling nurses to be at the bedside
before a resident has exited his or her bed; turning
and positioning alerts, utilizing patient-specific
repositioning frequency settings, as well as
resident turn verification alerts.
The equipment entails a sensor placed under
the resident’s mattress, which is connected
to a discrete processing unit behind the bed.
Sensors send signals to this unit, providing
continuous contact-free and alarm-free
monitoring for patients. Assigned licensed
nurses and certified nursing assistants on
35
the unit, in addition to nursing supervisors
and medical attending, wear pagers that alert
them when patients’ heart and respiratory
rates are sensed to be out of desired ranges as
determined by the attending physician, and
when a patient attempts to exit a bed or needs
to be turned or repositioned. When a patient’s
alert is triggered and sensed, the system also
alerts nurses on I-Pad devices and on a large
computer screen which displays:
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Real time status displays of up to 26 patients.
Visual and audio identification of potential
critical events.
A variety of patient management reports
including nurse shift report and patient
status report.
Resident’s continuous measurements and
trends display.
Staff from EarlySense came on-site for a
technology and clinical needs assessment during
this past summer to make ready for the September
launch. During the week of September 25th,
EarlySense personnel were on-site to train CNAs,
RNs, LPNs, physicians and other staff, and to
install the new system. Actual go-live date was
September 28 th , but for now, this is still a pilot
program and was only implemented in Parker’s
Three North West Wing (rooms 301 – 313).
EarlySense remained on-site for a couple of
days after the go-live date, to support Parker’s
staff while they learned the new system and be
available as needed.
Adviser a publication of LeadingAge New York | Fall 2017