Are You Using a Remote Patient Monitoring Solution for Sepsis detection and Sepsis Bundle Delivery?
By Tim Kuebelbeck, Ambient Clinical Analytics - Chief Customer Officer
Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) uses digital technologies to collect medical and other forms of personal health information (PHI) from individuals in one location and electronically display that information securely to providers in a different location for triage, assessment and care recommendations. RPM allows providers to view and track relevant healthcare data for a patient regardless of the patient’s location. The patient’s setting could be anything from an ICU, to an acute care inpatient bed, or at home.
The challenge going into the coming years is developing a digital health platform that is able to integrate different programs and allow for easy access for both patients and providers¹. Remote Patient Monitoring programs can collect a wide range of health data from the point of care and health care record such as vital signs, weight, blood pressure, blood sugar, blood oxygen levels, heart rate, electrocardiograms, and bedside device data. This data is then displayed or transmitted real-time to health professionals in remote patient monitoring centers in primary care settings, hospitals, intensive care units, skilled nursing facilities, and centralized off-site clinical control centers. Health professionals monitor these patients remotely and act on the information received.
Remote Patient Monitoring systems help alert health care staff to potential clinical issues, keep people healthy, allow older and disabled individuals to live at home longer and avoid having to move into skilled nursing facilities. While traditionally RPM has been thought of as in-home or ambulatory monitoring, that perception is not entirely accurate, and is quickly changing to include inpatient care as well. Because remote patient monitoring also serves inpatient populations so effectively, many health systems are now evaluating or deploying solutions to detect issues early like sepsis, patient decompensation, and to have the capability to monitor quarantined patients remotely. In fact, 88 percent of providers who were surveyed by health IT thought leaders earlier this year...were evaluating investments in RPM technologies².
Many of the FDA approved solutions have proven their efficacy in reducing the number of hospitalizations, readmissions, and lengths of stay in hospitals, which helps improve quality of life and contain costs for health systems. A great example of this is remote patient monitoring for clinical issues like sepsis. With the current health system model of deploying a non-FDA cleared EHR’s sepsis detection solution driving a U.S. national average of 49% bundle compliance for sepsis³, is it any wonder that health systems lose enormous amounts of money on treating sepsis patients? This means that less than 50%, or maybe better said, less than 1 in 2 patients with sepsis, receive appropriate treatment and signifies a massive failure in the current EHR deployment model. This clearly indicates the current strategy needs to be fixed and illustrates that the EHR alone isn’t the answer.
As we work with hospitals, more and more we see remote patient monitoring being used in conjunction with bedside and nurse station point of care sepsis response teams to make sure sepsis detection and bundle compliance are happening at significantly higher rates than 49%. For sepsis remote patient monitoring, there are three critical focus areas: early detection, early intervention, and timely delivery of all care elements. FDA approved solutions help ensure that all three of the focus areas are met. Ambient’s Sepsis DART™ (Detection and Response Tool) is an FDA Class II approved remote patient monitoring solution that is designed to encompass all three of the critical focus areas. Sepsis DART™ has a patient tracker board that provides automatic sepsis surveillance and at-a-glance awareness of patient status, enabling the remote monitoring of large numbers of patients simultaneously. Sepsis DART™ also uses smart alerts that directly notify care givers of a potential sepsis development in a patient and using smart escalation it continues to notify care givers until someone on the team takes action. Sepsis DART™, most importantly, graphically tracks the delivery of the sepsis care bundle (as appropriate for that patient) while providing reminders where elements of the bundle may be in jeopardy of not being delivered correctly or in a timely fashion. To learn about Sepsis DART™ and how it can help you please register for our educational webinar here:
Mitigating Sepsis Risk and Exposure in Hospitals Using Remote Patient Monitoring
An Ambient Clinical Analytics webinar on: Using FDA cleared solutions to drive consistent 1, 3, & 6-hour care pathways delivery
A major lagging indicator of poor clinical performance is elevated costs of care, and excellent clinical outcomes are typically followed by indications of a lower cost of care. There are several sources and articles over the years that prove this. Specific to sepsis treatment, according to a recent article in HFMA, small hospitals experience net margin losses of ~$9.9M and larger hospitals experience a net margin loss of ~$33.9M on sepsis treatment⁴. A fully FDA compliant solution deployed in a hospital will deliver bundle compliance into the high 70th to mid 80th percentile in under 30 days (versus 49%), not to mention change the financial picture for hospitals. Even more important, deploying an FDA complaint remote patient monitoring or sepsis detection solution drives massive positive change for patient outcomes.
For more information on how you can drive sepsis improvement in your organization with Ambient Clinical Analytics please contact tim.kuebelbeck@ambientclinical.com.
About Ambient Clinical Analytics - As an industry leader, Ambient is supporting leading healthcare systems and has done so since its founding in 2013. Our solutions are designed by clinicians to be easy-to-use by every caregiver in your organization and are configured to be up and running rapidly. We are trusted by a community of high-performing healthcare providers across the United States. Our solutions are powerful real-time point-of-care and remote healthcare platforms designed to deliver data visualization, communication, and analytics based clinical decision support solutions.
Ambient’s AWARE™ solution is an exceptionally secure, high-performance, FDA Class II approved and CE Marking certified Software as a Medical Device (SaMD) platform. Ambient’s Sepsis DART™ product has been accepted into the Patient Safety Movement’s Actionable Patient Safety Solutions (APSS) #9 for Sepsis. Ambient has achieved ISO 13485:2016 certification, an internationally recognized quality standard specific to the medical device industry. The ISO 13485 standard sets out the requirements for a quality management system specific to the medical device industry. Ambient is also deploying the AWARE™ family of solutions, to help manage COVID-19. Ambient’s Virtual ICU platforms are ideal for dealing with current and possible future outbreaks. For more information, visit https://ambientclinical.com.
Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) uses digital technologies to collect medical and other forms of personal health information (PHI) from individuals in one location and electronically display that information securely to providers in a different location for triage, assessment and care recommendations. RPM allows providers to view and track relevant healthcare data for a patient regardless of the patient’s location. The patient’s setting could be anything from an ICU, to an acute care inpatient bed, or at home.
The challenge going into the coming years is developing a digital health platform that is able to integrate different programs and allow for easy access for both patients and providers¹. Remote Patient Monitoring programs can collect a wide range of health data from the point of care and health care record such as vital signs, weight, blood pressure, blood sugar, blood oxygen levels, heart rate, electrocardiograms, and bedside device data. This data is then displayed or transmitted real-time to health professionals in remote patient monitoring centers in primary care settings, hospitals, intensive care units, skilled nursing facilities, and centralized off-site clinical control centers. Health professionals monitor these patients remotely and act on the information received.
Remote Patient Monitoring systems help alert health care staff to potential clinical issues, keep people healthy, allow older and disabled individuals to live at home longer and avoid having to move into skilled nursing facilities. While traditionally RPM has been thought of as in-home or ambulatory monitoring, that perception is not entirely accurate, and is quickly changing to include inpatient care as well. Because remote patient monitoring also serves inpatient populations so effectively, many health systems are now evaluating or deploying solutions to detect issues early like sepsis, patient decompensation, and to have the capability to monitor quarantined patients remotely. In fact, 88 percent of providers who were surveyed by health IT thought leaders earlier this year...were evaluating investments in RPM technologies².
Many of the FDA approved solutions have proven their efficacy in reducing the number of hospitalizations, readmissions, and lengths of stay in hospitals, which helps improve quality of life and contain costs for health systems. A great example of this is remote patient monitoring for clinical issues like sepsis. With the current health system model of deploying a non-FDA cleared EHR’s sepsis detection solution driving a U.S. national average of 49% bundle compliance for sepsis³, is it any wonder that health systems lose enormous amounts of money on treating sepsis patients? This means that less than 50%, or maybe better said, less than 1 in 2 patients with sepsis, receive appropriate treatment and signifies a massive failure in the current EHR deployment model. This clearly indicates the current strategy needs to be fixed and illustrates that the EHR alone isn’t the answer.
As we work with hospitals, more and more we see remote patient monitoring being used in conjunction with bedside and nurse station point of care sepsis response teams to make sure sepsis detection and bundle compliance are happening at significantly higher rates than 49%. For sepsis remote patient monitoring, there are three critical focus areas: early detection, early intervention, and timely delivery of all care elements. FDA approved solutions help ensure that all three of the focus areas are met. Ambient’s Sepsis DART™ (Detection and Response Tool) is an FDA Class II approved remote patient monitoring solution that is designed to encompass all three of the critical focus areas. Sepsis DART™ has a patient tracker board that provides automatic sepsis surveillance and at-a-glance awareness of patient status, enabling the remote monitoring of large numbers of patients simultaneously. Sepsis DART™ also uses smart alerts that directly notify care givers of a potential sepsis development in a patient and using smart escalation it continues to notify care givers until someone on the team takes action. Sepsis DART™, most importantly, graphically tracks the delivery of the sepsis care bundle (as appropriate for that patient) while providing reminders where elements of the bundle may be in jeopardy of not being delivered correctly or in a timely fashion. To learn about Sepsis DART™ and how it can help you please register for our educational webinar here:
Mitigating Sepsis Risk and Exposure in Hospitals Using Remote Patient Monitoring
An Ambient Clinical Analytics webinar on: Using FDA cleared solutions to drive consistent 1, 3, & 6-hour care pathways delivery
A major lagging indicator of poor clinical performance is elevated costs of care, and excellent clinical outcomes are typically followed by indications of a lower cost of care. There are several sources and articles over the years that prove this. Specific to sepsis treatment, according to a recent article in HFMA, small hospitals experience net margin losses of ~$9.9M and larger hospitals experience a net margin loss of ~$33.9M on sepsis treatment⁴. A fully FDA compliant solution deployed in a hospital will deliver bundle compliance into the high 70th to mid 80th percentile in under 30 days (versus 49%), not to mention change the financial picture for hospitals. Even more important, deploying an FDA complaint remote patient monitoring or sepsis detection solution drives massive positive change for patient outcomes.
For more information on how you can drive sepsis improvement in your organization with Ambient Clinical Analytics please contact tim.kuebelbeck@ambientclinical.com.
About Ambient Clinical Analytics - As an industry leader, Ambient is supporting leading healthcare systems and has done so since its founding in 2013. Our solutions are designed by clinicians to be easy-to-use by every caregiver in your organization and are configured to be up and running rapidly. We are trusted by a community of high-performing healthcare providers across the United States. Our solutions are powerful real-time point-of-care and remote healthcare platforms designed to deliver data visualization, communication, and analytics based clinical decision support solutions.
Ambient’s AWARE™ solution is an exceptionally secure, high-performance, FDA Class II approved and CE Marking certified Software as a Medical Device (SaMD) platform. Ambient’s Sepsis DART™ product has been accepted into the Patient Safety Movement’s Actionable Patient Safety Solutions (APSS) #9 for Sepsis. Ambient has achieved ISO 13485:2016 certification, an internationally recognized quality standard specific to the medical device industry. The ISO 13485 standard sets out the requirements for a quality management system specific to the medical device industry. Ambient is also deploying the AWARE™ family of solutions, to help manage COVID-19. Ambient’s Virtual ICU platforms are ideal for dealing with current and possible future outbreaks. For more information, visit https://ambientclinical.com.
- McGrail, Samantha, Remote Patient Monitoring, Reimbursement Topped Headlines in 2019 , MHealthIntelligence.com, 2019
- McGrail, Samantha, Remote Patient Monitoring, Reimbursement Topped Headlines in 2019 , MHealthIntelligence.com, 2019
- Castellucci, M., Just 49% of hospitals follow CMS’ sepsis treatment protocols, Modern Healthcare, July 27, 2018
- Kulick, D., et al., Sepsis poses a cost-containment challenge in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, HFMA, July 20, 2020