Keeping patients safe is a constant challenge. Fortunately, Collette Health remote patient observation can improve patient and staff safety through video monitoring.
The Institute of Medicine (IOM) considers patient safety “indistinguishable from the delivery of quality health care.” Patient safety is largely measured by the absence of patient harm – for example low rates of patient injury and mortality. When it comes to preventing adverse outcomes for patients, nurses are on the frontlines and often bear the responsibility for keeping patients safe. (Source: NCBI)
Keeping patients safe is a constant challenge, made more acute by the ongoing staffing shortages. Fortunately, emerging healthcare technologies can help to support nursing staff by assisting in patient safety monitoring. For example, the Collette Health remote observation solution leverages technology to enable live sitters to observe patients and identify a patient that could be at risk. Collette Health’s cloud-based platform provides proactive motion detection to direct the attention of sitters, and when an observer identifies that the patient is at risk, they can simultaneously verbally redirect the patient while sending an alert to the attending medical staff with the effortless click of a button. (Source: Collette Health Features).
Essentially, one Collette Health observer can monitor up to ten patients at once, keeping more patients safe without straining staff resources. Overall, there is more capacity for observation which means more patients and even staff can be kept safe. Let’s take a closer look.
Stop Patient Adverse Events
The best way to reduce inpatient falls is to stop patient falls before they happen with a remote observation system like Collette Health. With remote observation, patient observers are trained to help prevent adverse events. With an observer, a patient is never truly alone. If they enter a dangerous situation, an observer is there to re-direct them or alert onsite medical staff.
But it doesn’t stop there. Collette Health observers can actually stop adverse events across the board. We stop patients from wandering, alerting someone when a patient is anxious or becoming aggressive, stop confused patients from taking unauthorized prescriptions, alert someone about a device malfunction, and more. Our observers are a true part of the care team. Patients are attended to more quickly and efficiently, and outcomes are improved. To read real life examples of prevented medical errors, read our white paper here.
Keep Staff Safe
Collette Health can also be used as a virtual witness for staff that are performing diagnostic exams independently—especially when those exams or procedures may compromise patient dignity.
Think of different instances where a patient makes accusations against a health care worker. Until the health care worker is proven innocent or guilty, there’s time off work, an investigation, loss of wages, and so much more. Or what about an aggressive patient that puts the nursing staff at risk for injury, themselves? How nice would it be to know that, as a clinician, you have that extra set of eyes to back up what you’re doing?
Collette Health also limits staff exposure. With Collette Health, a remote patient observer can keep watch over a COVID-19 patient 24×7 without having to physically be in the room with them. Patient wants and needs will be known ahead of time, resulting in a consolidated number of trips in and out of the patient’s room by nursing staff, eliminating the need for excessive gowning or risk of exposure. It is a win-win
These are our goals for virtual patient observation: stopping patient adverse events and keeping staff safe. These are just a few of the reasons your patients and staff can benefit from remote patient observation. If you are interested in seeing more examples of how patient observation can be leveraged in other areas such as geriatrics, pediatrics, rehabilitation hospitals, nursing facilities, behavioral health hospitals, and more, you can watch our recently recorded webinar here.
If you would like to learn more or are interested in installing Collette Health in your healthcare facility, visit our Contact Us page.