Christiana Care Wins ECRI Institute 2014 Award for Excellence in Health Technology Management and Patient Safety

PLYMOUTH MEETING, Pa., Sept. 29, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- ECRI Institute is pleased to announce Christiana Care Health System, Wilmington, DE, as the winner of its 9th Annual Health Devices Achievement Award. The award recognizes an outstanding initiative undertaken by an ECRI Institute member healthcare institution that improves patient safety, reduces costs, or otherwise facilitates better strategic management of health technology. 

The winning submission, Best Practices in Telemetry Management: Re-defining Use While Maintaining Patient Safety and Reducing Costs, describes Christiana Care's successful effort to reduce the overutilization of non-intensive-care cardiac telemetry throughout its health system by redesigning its cardiac telemetry processes. The intent of the initiative was to improve patient safety, allow clinical staff to focus on their patients' direct care requirements, and help staff use healthcare resources more wisely.

A multidisciplinary team led by Robert Dressler, MD, vice chair, department of medicine, set a goal of reducing the use of non-intensive-care cardiac telemetry by 20% within 12 months. The team's efforts resulted in a 43% reduction in the total number of patients on telemetry and a 47% reduction in average telemetry hours, with no adverse impact on patient safety—results that have been maintained a year after implementation. These improvements resulted in a 70% reduction in total telemetry costs for the health system, for an estimated annual savings of $4.8 million.

Christiana Care's outstanding telemetry management study was recently published as a Research Letter in the September 22, 2014 issue of JAMA Internal Medicine.

"We are honored that ECRI Institute has recognized the innovative systems-based approach our team took to improve the value-based care Christiana Care Health System provides non-ICU cardiac telemetry patients," says Dr. Dressler. "Championed by Cardiology, our team brought together the expertise to enhance the effectiveness of our bedside clinicians and nurses as caring partners for our patients."

"We congratulate Christiana Care for its winning initiative. The team did an outstanding job of demonstrating how to safely control and actually reduce the use of telemetry monitoring. A major benefit of this initiative was to reduce monitoring-related alarm fatigue, which is a serious problem in healthcare institutions," says ECRI Institute's James P. Keller, Jr., vice president, health technology evaluation and safety. "This project is an excellent model that healthcare organizations nationwide can adopt."

A formal award presentation will be made at Christiana Care Health System. Christiana Care's award-winning initiative and those of the five award finalists will be featured on the ECRI Institute website. This year's finalists include:   

• Banner Health, Scottsdale, AZ: Bed Standards and Human Factors Usability Studies Utilized for Bed Purchasing Decisions
• Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA: Optimizing Patient Safety: A Centralized Cardiac Monitoring Center (Cockpit)
• The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA: Using Video to Evaluate Physiologic Monitor Alarm Characteristics and Nurse Responses to Alarms
• Geisinger Health System, Danville, PA: Objective Assessment of Incoming Clinical Technology & Devices
• U.S. Army Western Regional Medical Command, Joint Base Lewis-McChord, WA: Nomenclature Standardization Initiative (NSI) 

For more information about ECRI Institute's Health Devices Achievement Award or about becoming a member of ECRI Institute's medical technology procurement and management programs, contact ECRI Institute at (610) 825-6000, ext. 5891, visit www.ecri.org, e-mail [email protected], or write to 5200 Butler Pike, Plymouth Meeting, PA 19462-1298, USA.

About ECRI Institute
ECRI Institute (www.ecri.org), a nonprofit organization, dedicates itself to bringing the discipline of applied scientific research to healthcare to discover which medical procedures, devices, drugs, and processes are best to enable improved patient care. As pioneers in this science for 45 years, ECRI Institute marries experience and independence with the objectivity of evidence-based research. Strict conflict-of-interest guidelines ensure objectivity. ECRI Institute is designated an Evidence-based Practice Center by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. ECRI Institute PSO is listed as a federally certified Patient Safety Organization by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Find ECRI Institute on Facebook (www.facebook.com/ECRIInstitute) and on Twitter (www.twitter.com/ECRI_Institute).

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SOURCE ECRI Institute