System Installed to Help Clinicians Improve Safety, Speed Recoveries, Increase Efficiencies, and Reduce the Cost of Care at Palmetto Children's Hospital and Heart Hospital

Palmetto Health Richland in Columbia—part of Palmetto Health, South Carolina's largest and most comprehensive healthcare resource, and Masimo jointly announced South Carolina's first installation of Masimo Patient SafetyNet, an advanced remote monitoring and wireless clinician notification system designed to facilitate appropriate early clinical response, preempt sentinel events, and avoid unnecessary intensive care unit (ICU) transfers while helping hospitals to meet Joint Commission, Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation (APSF), and American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) clinical practice guidelines for patient safety.

Preventable patient deaths and injuries associated with failure to rescue events are one of today's most common medical errors.¹But today, hospitals have a new tool helping them to prevent failure to rescue events and improve patient safety. The Patient SafetyNet system allows clinicians at Palmetto Health-Richland to noninvasively, continuously, and remotely monitor multiple physiological measurements—including arterial oxygen saturation, perfusion index, and pulse rate—for up to 80 patients simultaneously from a central location, facilitating early detection of physiological abnormalities that prompts earlier intervention. In a recently-published landmark study, Patient SafetyNet was shown to help decrease distress codes and rescue activations by 65% and intensive care unit (ICU) transfers by 48%—saving 135 ICU days annually.²

According to Leah Inman, RT, Director of Respiratory Care at Palmetto Health Richland, "We are always looking to improve the quality of care for our patients and the Patient SafetyNet system is another way for us to do this."

When a patient is in distress, specific, detailed physiological data is transmitted to assigned clinicians, enabling them to intervene before the situation becomes critical and requires more acute levels of care. This is particularly important for post-surgical patients who are at increased risk of injury or death resulting from the respiratory depression effects of medications used for sedation and pain management.

Masimo Founder and CEO, Joe Kiani, stated, "Palmetto Health is a shining example of caring high-tech healthcare. With a long-standing tradition of deploying the latest technology and treatment protocols for quality patient care, they have been recognized as one of the '99 Most Wired Hospitals' and rewarded with the highest level of patient satisfaction in the nation. Their recent implementation of Patient SafetyNet adds another layer of patient safety and dimension of care in their efforts to improve the human condition."

¹ "The Sixth Annual HealthGrades Patient Safety in American Hospitals Study" April 2009. Available online here.
²Taenzer, Andreas H.; Pyke, Joshua B.; McGrath, Susan P.; Blike, George T. "Impact of Pulse Oximetry Surveillance on Rescue Events and Intensive Care Unit Transfers: A Before-and-After Concurrence Study." Anesthesiology, February 2010, Vol. 112, Issue 2. Available online here.