Inpatient Remote Monitoring Can Save Hospitals Billions

Contact-free continuous monitoring (CFCM) of patients in their hospital beds could save the healthcare sector billions of dollars. These are the latest findings of Frost & Sullivan (Frost; London, United Kingdom), an international market research firm.

The Frost report is based on studies by researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH; Boston, AM, USA), Chaim Sheba Medical Center (Tel Hashomer, Israel), and other institutions that evaluated cost savings attributable to the implementation of CFCM in a 33-bed medical-surgical unit, and to determine the return on investment associated with its implementation. Each bed was equipped with a monitoring unit, with data collected and compared nine month before and nine months after implementation.

The researchers constructed two models - a base case model, in which they estimated the total cost savings of intervention effects, and a conservative model in which they only included the direct variable cost component for the final length of stay and the treatment of pressure ulcers. The results showed that in the 5-year return on investment model, the monitoring system saved between a conservative USD 3,268,000 and USD 9,089,000, given an 80% prospective reimbursement rate.

The average net benefit of implementing the system ranged from USD 224 per patient (conservative model) to USD 710 per patient per year. A multi-way sensitivity analysis was performed using the most and least favorable conditions for all variables, which showed a return on investment that ranged from 127.1% to 601.7% for the least favorable conditions, and 627.5% to 1,739.7% for the most favorable conditions. By extending the savings to all 750,000 relevant beds in the U.S. Hospital System, Frost estimates that the American Healthcare system could save approximately USD 15 billion annually.

“The healthcare industry is constantly working to improve efficiency. These studies show that continuous monitoring presents a unique opportunity to create both top and bottom line benefits, while simultaneously improving quality of care,” said Charlie Whelan, transformational health North America consulting director at Frost & Sullivan. “The economic potential of adopting CFCM is a game-changer, in terms of changing patient outcomes, shortening hospital stays, and improving economics.”

The CFCM technology studied was the EarlySense (Waltham, MA, USA) contact-free motion, heart rate, and respiratory rate monitoring system, which has been shown to assist in the earlier detection of patient deterioration, reduction of patient length of stay, minimizing intensive care unit (ICU) utilization, reduction of falls and pressure ulcers, and avoidance of cardiac and respiratory arrests.

“The powerful peer-reviewed data, as well as practical experience gained by clinicians using our technology on hundreds of thousands of patients, is why CFCM solutions are rapidly becoming standard of care in many institutions,” said Avner Halperin, CEO of EarlySense. “We are excited to continue to offer the most advanced CFCM solutions to our customers in the U.S. and abroad, and to expand our reach to new facilities to help achieve positive patient outcomes and improved economics for the healthcare system.”

Related Links:
Frost & Sullivan
Brigham and Women's Hospital
Chaim Sheba Medical Center
EarlySense