FORT WAYNE, Ind.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--EXTENSION, Inc. announced today a new program, EXTENSION Evaluate™, that helps hospitals prepare for The Joint Commission’s new National Patient Safety Goal (NPSG.06.01.01) on clinical alarm safety. EXTENSION Evaluate is a service that is designed to collect and analyze a baseline of alarm and event information from a variety of medical devices and point of care systems. The Evaluate service is offered at no charge to qualifying hospitals and is delivered via a single server that functions similar to a common “black box” flight data recorder. Hospitals signing up for this new service will gain valuable insight into the types and quantities of alarms that contribute to alarm fatigue and interruptions in nursing care processes that are the core of the alarm safety problem.
“EXTENSION recognizes that hospitals have been forming alarm safety committees to establish a plan for managing alarms in compliance with The Joint Commission’s new NPSG,” said Sarah Williams, Sr. Program Manager for Evaluate. “We designed the Evaluate program to provide the committee with the baseline data that is required as part of the first series of recommended steps for addressing alarm fatigue.” Williams continued, “EXTENSION is in a unique position in the market because its alarm safety solution provides a detailed alarm analysis performed using software running on a single EXTENSION server.”
Hospitals can register for the EXTENSION Evaluate program via the EXTENSION website. An EXTENSION Solutions Consultant will conduct a discovery call with qualifying hospitals to determine which systems and medical devices - such as patient monitors - can be analyzed. The Evaluate data collection will be performed for up to 30 days at no charge and at the end of the data collection period a detailed report will be presented to the hospital alarm safety committee along with key findings and the following deliverables:
- Overview of the current state via a series of data collection reports
- Literature review / Research data
- Specific process recommendations based on data findings
“EXTENSION has developed the next generation platform for alarm safety and event response management,” said Todd Plesko, CEO at EXTENSION. “We can help hospitals collect and interpret the data they need to comply with the new NPSG today, but also provide the expertise to guide them in creating a long-term strategy for reducing alarm fatigue and improving patient safety.”
EXTENSION Engage unifies the alarm and event-generating systems in a hospital. With its advanced clinical rules and workflow engine, Engage intelligently assembles a comprehensive patient profile and routes only relevant alerts enriched with key contextual data to the appropriate clinician(s); which enables event response to be better managed through the use of secure text messaging and voice from any mobile phone.
“First generation middleware platforms were not designed to manage the flow of alarms in a holistic way,” explained Plesko. “Engage goes beyond automating alerts and sending them to mobile phones by applying intelligence that enables hospitals to cut through the clinical noise and deliver only what is relevant, which reduces the instance of false alarms and alert fatigue.”
To learn more about the EXTENSION Evaluate program or to see if your hospital qualifies, visit EXTENSION’s website or contact the program manager, Sarah Williams, at SWilliams@Ext-Inc.com or 260-797-0200 x4243.
EXTENSION, Inc. (www.opentheredbox.com)
EXTENSION is leading the industry into the next generation of clinical alarm safety systems. EXTENSION has merged advanced alarm management software with an innovative communications approach that enables clinical collaboration to occur in response to patient-related critical events via event driven secure text messaging and voice. The EXTENSION® Engage™ solution provides an advanced clinical rules and workflow engine that delivers intelligent notifications based on key contextual alarm, patient, and care team data. These intelligent notifications are securely routed to the appropriate staff members via their preferred communications device to support informed clinical engagement across the complete hospital enterprise. Through EXTENSION Engage, clinicians can instantly initiate informed responses to critical events through secure text response and voice call and engage their patients and other members of the care team from any location. EXTENSION Engage has been granted FDA 510k Class II clearance for medical device secondary alarming.
