Ventilated Patient Surveillance

A Long History in Ventilated Patient Surveillance

Bernoulli’s roots go back over 25 years to when the company first began to develop and sell mechanical ventilators. Founded by a Yale trained anesthesiologist/intensivist, the company (then Cardiopulmonary Corporation) used advanced networking and connectivity technology to enable remote ventilator monitoring to improve patient care and safety. From that point in time, Bernoulli became a leader in medical device integration (MDI) and developed a central surveillance solution. The integrated solution helps respiratory therapists (RTs) observe all ventilated patients in the hospital from a remote location. What’s more is Bernoulli’s ability to capture real-time data, apply advanced analytics (rules), and display patient status on a remote surveillance dashboard. This helps to better inform clinical decisions.
With vast knowledge of ventilators and vent integration, Bernoulli is the most trusted name in ventilated patient clinical surveillance.

Improving Quality of Care with Ventilated Patient Clinical Surveillance

Caring for Ventilated Patients Across the Health System

Caring for ventilated patients across an entire health system is no easy task. In part because ventilation methods and modes can vary by patient and condition. Because settings and therapy plans may be different for each patient, respiratory therapists (RT) must visit each patient room to review ordered settings and make ventilator adjustments based on the patient’s current state. This is time consuming to say the least. More importantly, if a patient’s condition changes, a timely adjustment to the ventilator may be necessary – but the caregiver may not be at the patient’s bedside. With the advent of non-invasive ventilation and moving of ventilated patients to lower acuity departments in the hospital, RT coverage and patient prioritization have become even more challenging.
The Bernoulli platform includes a central surveillance module that makes caring for ventilated patients across all departments within a health system more efficient. Bernoulli enables remote monitoring for patients on ventilation and empowers the clinician to determine appropriate vent setting adjustments (e.g., respiratory rate, tidal volume, peak inspiratory pressure, and mode) from a central display. More than improving workflows, better care for patients on ventilators can help to improve operational efficiencies such as reduced length of stay and costs.

A Real-Time View of the Patient’s Current State

While the EHR has an important purpose in documenting the patient’s medical journey, the EHR does not provide a real-time view into the patient’s current state. On a busy unit, it may take a nurse many hours to add documentation to the EHR and unfortunately, the patient’s condition may have drastically changed during that time. Understanding the patient’s current state is imperative for making the right treatment plans for the patient.
Because Bernoulli includes a leading MDI capability, the solution integrates with all major brands of ventilators, physiologic monitors, and other patient care devices. More so, Bernoulli captures real-time data from these systems including waveforms and alarms from various types of vents. Analytics applied to real-time data and waveforms can be used to detect deteriorating patient conditions. In some cases, this real-time intel can be used to prevent emergency ventilation, if detected early enough. Furthermore, Bernoulli translates and transfers ventilator data (i.e. real-time vitals) to the EHR so that the EHR becomes more than just a tool for documentation.
Bernoulli also has the ability to integrate with nurse call systems to improve workflow and create a quieter care environment. When a vent alarm is triggered, Bernoulli can light the nurse call dome light outside the patient room which provides a silent visual indication of which patient room is experiencing an alarming condition.
Bernoulli has integrations with many ventilator manufacturers including:

• Medtronic / Puritan Bennett / Newport
• Maquet / Siemens
• Draeger
• GE Healthcare / VersaMed
• Hamilton Medical
• Vyaire / Carefusion / Pulmonetics
• Philips / Respironics
• Flight Medical

With Bernoulli’s ventilator integration and real-time data, clinicians have a better picture of the patient’s situation and can make more informed decisions.

Managing Ventilator Alarms and Improving Alarm Safety

Managing ventilator alarms is not a new topic of conversation. In fact, ECRI Institute highlights ventilator alarms in their 2015 and 2017 Top 10 Health IT Hazards reports. More specifically, the 2015 report lists ‘Ventilator Disconnections Not Caught because of Mis-set or Missed Alarms’ as the fifth most hazardous issue and the 2017 report lists ‘Missed Ventilator Alarms Can Lead to Patient Harm’ as the third most hazardous.
With Bernoulli, hospitals can better manage their ventilator alarm conditions, reduce nuisance alarms, quiet patient rooms, and improve outcomes. Continue reading to learn how Bernoulli helped the Hospital for Special Care manage data from over 100 ventilators and reduce vent alarms.