Remote Monitoring Solutions to Support Surge Capacity Management
Rick Gannotta has been an industry leader in healthcare administration for more than twenty years. He’s held senior leadership roles at Duke Raleigh Hospital, NYC Health + Hospitals, and University of California, Irvine (UCI) Health before joining Masimo as Chief Healthcare Administration Officer. Rick possesses a deep expertise in leading healthcare enterprises in highly competitive markets, as well as insight into healthcare economics strategy, market development, patient safety, innovation, and transformation.
What role does remote monitoring play in supporting surge capacity management challenges—especially during the COVID-19 pandemic?
RG: First, there are conventional surge capacity challenges, such as a very busy day for the ED. In that scenario, things are still confined to the department, and overflow, in general, isn’t an issue. When demand escalates to a state of contingency surge management, you need to go beyond the ED into non-monitored adjacent spaces, or alternative locations, where care teams can rapidly reconfigure the available space to safely care for a higher level of patient complexity than that area is historically equipped to provide; one example would be transforming a med-surg area into an ICU. In a crisis situation, such as an overwhelming disaster or what we are experiencing with the pandemic, we have to utilize non-traditional areas of care, including field hospitals as well as care in the home. In all three scenarios, remote monitoring capabilities can prove essential, and when coupled with the ability to monitor patients continuously, these technologies can provide clinicians with a line of sight on a patient’s clinical trajectory that allows them to address issues through medical intervention based on the data they are receiving. This strategy has proven effective at major hospitals such as St. Luke’s in Pennsylvania and University Hospitals in Cleveland.
To what extent do you think the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the hospital-to-home/remote monitoring landscape, and, do you think this change is permanent?
RG: Existing remote monitoring programs and initiatives have been accelerated across the board by the COVID-19 pandemic, revealing how incredibly effective remote monitoring can be at identifying changes in clinical condition or patient status. In addition, although the rate of adoption of remote monitoring varies across the country—and is influenced by a number of variables, such as academic medical center vs. community hospital, urban vs. rural, payer mix, and reimbursement issues— we believe this shift to at home monitoring and telehealth options will be permanent.
What remote monitoring solutions are available today?
RG: Masimo is leading the industry with a wide range of medicalgrade monitoring technologies—including Masimo SafetyNet™, which offers the ability to monitor SpO2, respiration rate, temperature, and pulse rate. Masimo SafetyNet is powered by Masimo Signal Extraction Technology ® (SET ® ), the same technology trusted for use in high-acuity, high-complexity care environments, such as operating rooms and ICUs.
What are the current limits of remote monitoring and how do they impact the adoption of remote monitoring solutions?
RG: I think you can’t overestimate how hard-hit morale is at hospitals in places like New York, Seattle, and Detroit. We have heard there is a psychological benefit just in letting caregivers know these new monitoring resources are on the way. When you hear of doctors wearing a single N95 mask for an entire week, it shows how desperate the situation has gotten.
Healthcare providers are on the financial brink now. Who is going to pay for the hardware you are talking about?
RG: Remote monitoring technologies have accelerated at lightning speed, but there are a few challenges that each health system has to address as they adopt them. These issues can easily be overcome and it’s well worth the effort because remote monitoring allows hospitals to extend care beyond the boundaries of the hospital—which benefits patients, care teams, and healthcare administration alike.
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