It’s Time For The Caregiver Defense Act

A call to help hospitals preserve PPE and reduce the risk of staff getting COVID-19

The scarcity of personal protective equipment (PPE) in hospitals is raising alarm across the country as cases of COVID-19 rise exponentially. Every health system has goals of optimizing PPE consumption and reducing caregiver exposure to infected patients. The founder and CEO of AvaSure wants to help hospitals across the U.S. repurpose his company’s remote safety monitoring solution – the TeleSitter – to achieve those goals.

AvaSure is used for things like reducing inpatient falls and workplace violence. How can it help with COVID-19?

BP: Rapidly and automatically. We are already in use in more than 60% of U.S. health systems. Clinical staff simply wheel our mobile room video-monitoring units devices into isolation rooms, turn them on and begin to monitor COVID-19 patients. The existing monitoring station and staff can be used, but many clientsare setting up a second monitoring station and training infection control staff, physicians and nurses to watch these very sick patients. A few have set up what we’re calling “compassion stations,” where family members are able to interact via video and audio with their loved ones at the end-of-life.

Are many hospitals really doing this?

BP: We don’t have a count, but we have a lot of evidence. We offered our clients free software licenses to help create dedicated monitoring centers for coronavirus cases; hundreds of hospitals and health systems snapped them up. We also received emergency orders from a number of existing clients to add room devices to their existing networks. And some non-clients contacted us asking if we could rush in with our system. It has really been an eyeopener to see this kind of effort to reduce the number of times staff are exposed to risk as well as the anecdotes we hear about the lack of basic equipment like PPE.

What are the other advantages of using AvaSure for Coronavirus patients?

BP: Having a camera and audio in the room allows the monitor to respond to alarms from medical equipment that are often in error. Nobody has to throw on PPE and rush into the room for no reason. Also, it allows for much more frequent interaction with quarantined patients who are not in ICU and on ventilation. Often, these patients are lonely as well as sick, as their families cannot visit in person.

Are you getting feedback from doctors and nurses on this?

BP: 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?

BP: We have been in conversations with legislative leaders and others on this. We think there should be some form of caregiver defense legislation. Lawmakers could show immediate support and stand up for our nation’s frontline clinical staff – who are putting their lives on the line to save victims of this pandemic – and provide matching funds for hospital systems to add more remote monitoring capabilities to their existing networks. Alternatively, some funds from either earlier legislation or a fourth stimulus bill could be appropriated for this purpose, especially with everyone so aware of the scarcity of PPE.

So, folks would be able to buy more devices. What happens when the crisis is over?

BP: They will use them to monitor the many at-risk patients they always have but haven’t had enough devices to watch. We find that most health systems haven’t reached a sweet spot on census under continuous observation, which is somewhere north of 8%-10%. Also, they would be prepared for a second wave of COVID-19 or some other pandemic, which everyone knows will come someday soon. Leaders can learn more about improving patient and staff safety while dramatically lowering the cost of care by visiting avasure.com/modernsolution and request a demonstration.