MAKING VITAL CONNECTIONS

CONNECTING VITAL SIGNS MONITORS TO THE ELECTRONIC MEDICAL RECORD 

 

As the government's meaningful use incentives are driving hospitals to rapidly adopt Electronic Medical Records, an increasing number of hospitals are also looking towards connecting their medical devices to the EMR for the purposes of automated documentation. Connecting vital signs monitoring systems to the EMR can increase the accuracy and efficiency of getting vitals data into a patient’s record. But this has made the systems more complex—not only to install and use, but also to shop for. In a recent Health Devices Evaluation (September 2011), ECRI Institute reviewed, tested, and rated several vital signs monitors, focusing on their ability to transmit their data to the EMR. 

Vital signs monitors are used to periodically measure basic physiologic parameters (“vitals”) such as noninvasive blood pressure (NIBP), oxygen saturation (SpO2), pulse rate, and temperature. These monitors are typically used in low-acuity areas, such as surgical and medical floors, clinics, and emergency department triage, to track the status of multiple low-acuity patients.

             In the current healthcare environment, there is an increasing focus on automated documentation—that is, electronic transfer of data from the  medical device (in this case, the vital signs monitor) to the hospital’s electronic medical record (EMR) system—in an effort to reduce some of the potential for errors resulting from manual documentation of patient data. Some vital signs monitor vendors provide specialized connectivity solutions that accomplish this. While some of these solutions are specific to the vendor’s vital signs monitors, others may be compatible with vital signs monitors from multiple vendors.

             Our testing for this Evaluation concentrated on the use of vital signs monitors for what is sometimes called “spot-check” monitoring. In this type of monitoring, a single set of vitals is measured from each patient at a given time and the time between measurements for a single patient may vary (e.g., two hours, four hours, eight hours) based on patient status/acuity, physician order, or hospital protocol.