Hospitals can save more than $1M annually by implementing Masimo Patient SafetyNet with SET pulse oximetry

MasimoMar 17 2010

Masimo (Nasdaq: MASI), the inventor of Pulse CO-Oximetry™ and Measure-Through Motion and Low Perfusion pulse oximetry, announced today that a new cost-effectiveness study shows that implementation of the Masimo Patient SafetyNet remote monitoring and clinician notification system with Masimo SET pulse oximetry saved one hospital $817,000 in its first year.  The study, being presented on Monday, March 22, 2010, at the International Anesthesia Research Society (IARS) Annual Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii, also projects that the hospital's future annual savings will be $1,295,000 -- providing a compelling financial rationale to expand monitoring in post-surgical patients on the general floor.  

In the study titled: "Cost-effectiveness of Patient Surveillance Systems," researchers at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, NH, analyzed the cost savings associated with clinical outcome improvements shown in their clinical study published in the February 2010 issue of Anesthesiology -- the first published report to demonstrate that continuous Measure-Through Motion and Low Perfusion pulse oximetry monitoring of post-surgical patients on the general floor with Masimo SET and automatic clinician notification with Masimo Patient SafetyNet leads to a "significant drop" in key clinical outcome measures, including fewer rescue events, fewer ICU transfers, and reduced annualized ICU days.  After comparing cost data gathered before and after installation on Dartmouth's 36-bed post-surgical general care unit, researchers showed that implementation of Masimo Patient SafetyNet enabled clinicians to reduce hospital costs by $255 per patient the first year and a projected $404 per patient in subsequent years.  Researchers concluded that these findings could "aid hospital administrators and physician leadership in their decision to deploy patient surveillance systems."

In the past, four primary factors prevented many hospitals from utilizing continuous pulse oximetry monitoring in post-surgical patients on the general floor: 1) An un-manageable number of false alarms; 2) costly and overly complex patient monitoring solutions; 3) the lack of clinical outcomes data demonstrating improved patient safety; and 4) the lack of clear financial justification.  Today, the false alarm problem has been solved with gold-standard Masimo SET pulse oximetry -- proven to reduce false alarms by 95%.  The costly and overly complex problem has been solved with Masimo Patient SafetyNet -- offering easy-to-use, but powerful remote monitoring that leverages the hospital's existing wireless network, requires only minimal equipment at the bedside, and does not require central station monitoring.  And now, both unprecedented clinical outcomes and cost savings have been attained by utilizing Masimo SET and Masimo Patient SafetyNet together on the general floor.  

According to Steve Moreau, President and CEO, San Antonio Community Hospital in Upland, California, "This study quantifies what we have believed all along -- that rapid response and the prevention of costly transfers to ICU saves both lives and dollars.  It's clear that the annual cost savings enabled by the Masimo Patient SafetyNet System could be significantly impactful on an individual hospital's bottom-line, but may also have bigger implications for healthcare economics overall." 

Under the financial model established by researchers, if all 5,815 registered hospitals in the U.S. were to implement Patient SafetyNet and realize the cost savings attained in the study, it would save between $4.7 and $7.5 billion in healthcare expenses each year -- representing a compelling financial justification for the U.S. healthcare system.

Michael O'Reilly, MD, EVP of Medical Affairs at Masimo, stated, "Researchers at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center have continued their groundbreaking clinical research into the patient and hospital impact of implementing Masimo technologies for post-surgical patients on the general floor with this cost-effectiveness study.  Although many new technologies improve patient care, they typically do so at an increased cost.  However, as this new study shows, Masimo SET and Masimo Patient SafetyNet have transcended the cost barrier to become part of a very select group of technologies that improve clinical outcomes and provide net cost savings.  In today's challenging healthcare climate, these benefits cannot be underestimated."