How to Prevent Medical Errors

As much as we try to avoid them, medical errors do sometimes transpire. MedSitter remote patient observation can help prevent medical errors.

A safe stay is a reasonable expectation when admitted to a hospital. However, as much as we try to avoid them, medical errors do sometimes transpire. Patient falls and equipment malfunctions are all potential occurrences that could happen. While these barriers that can get in the way of a safe hospital stay, leveraging technology solutions can help make it easier. With the help of MedSitter remote patient observation, many of these medical errors can be avoided. Let’s see how.

What Is MedSitter?

Remote patient observation is a technology-enabled solution that connects at-risk patients to remote observers over video. Mobile carts equipped with cameras are left with at-risk patients. An observer at a command center can observe multiple patients (up to ten!) at one time via a video connection and can contact both the patient and onsite medical staff as necessary. Utilizing one patient observer for several patients serves to stretch staff resources without sacrificing patient safety. It also helps patient observers to avoid infectious disease, since they are no longer required to be in the room with the patients they are observing.

How MedSitter Prevents Patient Falls

The best way to reduce inpatient falls is to stop patient falls before they happen with a remote observation system like MedSitter. 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.

Historically, if a patient was at high risk of injury, a 1:1 sitter would be assigned to them. This is both invasive and requires significant staff resources. In contrast, remote observers are unobtrusive, and are less demanding on hospital staff. It is easy for a patient to forget that they are under continuous remote observation and can thus settle in and feel more comfortable during their stay. Since remote observers can monitor more patients at one time, there are more opportunities for patients at all risk levels to benefit from observation. Overall, there is more capacity for observation which means more patients can be kept safe.

How MedSitter Prevents Other Medical Errors

When we founded MedSitter, we were addressing an important issue within the marketplace. Patient falls, despite being deemed a never event by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services, still occur every day in hospitals across the nation. While patient safety is our priority, there are surprisingly many other reasons to use MedSitter, that can, in turn, can prevent numerous other medical errors from occurring.

MedSitter observers can 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.

MedSitter was originally designed to stop patient falls before they happen. But remote patient observation can do more than that. Leveraging MedSitter across your entire organization gives patient observers the opportunity to catch potential adverse events before they happen, preventing medical errors across the board.

If you are interested in installing MedSitter in your healthcare facility, visit our Contact Us page now.