Tag: PATIENT MONITORING

Our Love-Hate Relationship with Opioids: 3 Things Clinicians Can Do to Improve Patient Safety and the Quality of Patient Care

By Michael Wong, JD (Founder & Executive Director, Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety)

Our Opioid Dichotomy

Opioids are something we love and hate, all at the same time. On the one hand, they are a great pain reliever and are often used to provide analgesia and supplement sedation during general anesthesia or monitored anesthesia care. On the other hand, opioids can be addictive and too much opioids can lead to opioid overdose and death. Justine Igwe (Nursing Student in Nigeria at the University of Nigeria Enugu Campus) recently wrote about opioids’ pain relief vs. addiction/overdose dichomotomy:

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Early Detection of Sepsis Through Monitoring Saves Patient Lives

Editor’s Note: In this video interview, Dr. Ken Rothfield urges his fellow clinicians to monitor patients for sepsis. Says Dr. Rothfeld, “patient monitoring can alert you at the earliest possible moment when sepsis is developing.”

Clinical studies have found mortality is significantly reduced if septic patients are identified at early stages of the disease process. Anand Kumar, MD (Critical Care Medicine, Health Sciences Centre/St. Boniface Hospital, University of Manitoba) and his colleagues in “Duration of hypotension before initiation of effective antimicrobial therapy is the critical determinant of survival in human septic shock” found in their research that early detection and treatment of sepsis is akey to reduced morbidity and mortality:

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How to Select the Best Patient Monitoring Systems

We are often asked how to select the best patient monitoring systems.

To help with the decision making process, we offer two resources:

  • In a clinical education podcast, “Selecting Patient Monitoring Systems,” Melissa Powell (Chief Operating Officer, The Allure Group); Priyanka Shah (Project Engineer, ECRI Institute); and Charlie Whelan (Director of Consulting, Transformational Health, Frost & Sullivan) provide their guidance on how to select the best patient monitoring systems to meet your clinical needs.
  • The Guide to Patient Monitoring features these manufacturers’ answers about their patient monitoring systems:
    • Becton Dickinson
    • EarlySense
    • GE Healthcare
    • Masimo
    • Medtronic – we recently added their answers, so please check it out and tell us what you think!
    • Philips
    • Respiratory Motion
    • Sotera Wireless

To view manufacturer answers, please click here.

If there is a question you’d like answered or a manufacturer that has not been included, please let us know!

 

Is a Patient’s Life Worth $30 per Day?

When I interviewed Dr. Frank Overdyk for a clinical education podcast, “Preventing Avoidable Deaths” I asked myself this question, “Is a Patient’s Life Worth $30 per Day?”

Frank Overdyk, MD is an anesthesiologist practicing in Charleston, SC.  He organized two conferences on opioid-induced respiratory depression for the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation. Dr. Overdyk also is a member of the advisory board for the Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety.

During the podcast, Dr. Overdyk said that the costs of monitoring patients was between $20 to #30 dollars per day:

“there are estimates that the daily cost of continuous monitoring of a patient for example with a pulse oximetry is on the order of 20 or 30 dollars a day. This does not include the cost implications of staff workflow and some of these other softer costs – indirect costs.”

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Recommendations for Procedural Sedation

The Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety (PPAHS) announced its intention to develop a position statement on recommendations for procedural sedation.

Michael Wong, JD (Founder and Executive Director, PPAHS) explained that such a position statement on recommendations for procedural sedation would encapsulate guidelines and recommendations from leading medical organizations in Canada and the United States:

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Using Capnography and Recognizing Respiratory Compromise Could Save Patient Lives

The Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety (PPAHS) released a clinical education podcast, “Using Capnography and Recognizing Respiratory Compromise Could Save Patient Lives.”

The podcast features an interview with Jenifer Lightdale, MPH, MD who is division chief, pediatric gastroenterology and chief quality officer at the Children’s Medical Center at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

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8 Ways to Improve Patient Safety and Health Outcomes

Articles we have been reading this past week of April 23, 2018 discuss eight ways to improve patient safety and health outcomes.

#1 Way to Improve Patient Safety and Health Outcomes- Use Opioid-Sparing Strategies and More Precise Monitoring

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The Case for Continuous Surveillance Monitoring and Real-Time Analytics

In this article which was published in Healthcare Business Today, Michael Wong, JD (Founder and Executive Director, Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety) makes the case for continuous surveillance monitoring and real-time analytics.

The successful implementation of continuous surveillance monitoring may have substantial patient benefits. Unfortunately, analyzing notifications from individual medical devices, reliance on physical spot checks of patients, and the lack of rules-based advanced analytics to assess a patient’s current condition in real-time or to identify signs of deterioration is a goal that many hospitals and health systems still have not attained.

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Selecting Patient Monitoring Systems

The Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety released a clinical education podcast – Selecting Patient Monitoring Systems.

“We are often asked by our clinical followers what patient monitoring systems that we would recommend,” said Michael Wong, JD (Founder/Executives Director). “To help with their decision making process, we have produced a clinical education podcast to provide some guidance on selecting patient monitoring devices.”

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Preventing Avoidable Deaths

In a clinical education podcast, Frank Overdyk, MD, who is an anesthesiologist practicing in Charleston, SC, discusses preventing avoidable deaths and the costs of monitoring patients receiving opioids and the costs of not being monitored. It is impossible to predict with 100% accuracy how a particular patient will react when administered an opioid. Continuous patient monitoring, which costs just $20-$30 per day in the case of monitoring with pulse oximetry, is a small price to pay to help prevent avoidable patient deaths.

By Michael Wong, JD (Founder/Executive Director, Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety)

I recently interviewed Frank Overdyk, MD, who is an anesthesiologist practicing in Charleston, SC, about the costs of monitoring patients receiving opioids and the costs of not being monitored. Dr. Overdyk is a member of board of advisors of the Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety and organized the two conferences on opioid-induced respiratory depression (“OIRD”) for the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation.

Continue reading “Preventing Avoidable Deaths” →