Being in the hospital can be a scary prospect especially if it includes keeping any pain you're having under control with opioids that can slow your breathing or taking a new medication that can impact your blood pressure or heart rate.
The US Department of Health and Human Services defines an adverse drug event as “an injury resulting from medical intervention related to a drug”. This includes medication errors, adverse drug reactions, allergic reactions, and overdoses. They estimate that adverse drug events account for an estimated 1 in 3 of all hospital events, these events can prolong a patient’s hospital stay by approximately 2-5 days and about 2 million hospital stays are affected each year.
Adverse drug events cause approximately 1.3 million emergency department visits each year. About 350,000 patients each year need to be hospitalized for further treatment after emergency visits for adverse drug events. People typically take more medicines as they age, and the risk of adverse events may increase as more people take more medicines.
According to the CDC, older adults (65 years or older) visit emergency departments almost 450,000 times each year – more than twice as often as younger persons. Older adults are nearly seven times more likely than younger persons to be hospitalized after an emergency visit, but most of these hospitalizations are due to just a few drugs that should be monitored carefully to prevent problems. Blood thinners, diabetes medications, seizure medications, and opioid analgesics are some examples of these medications.
However, overdoses of opioid analgesics have contributed to a national epidemic. In 2015, more than 15,000 people died from overdoses involving prescription opioids. Although antibiotics are good drugs for certain types of infections, they are also one of the types of medicines that cause the most emergency visits for adverse drug events. Approximately 150,000 adults are treated in emergency departments each year because of adverse events from antibiotics.
With the ViSi Mobile monitoring system, with Life-Threatening Arrhythmia Detection, Fall Detection, and Posture notification, bedside staff can be notified of a patient deterioration related to an adverse drug event in real-time and prevent delayed treatment and associated additional patient harm.
Using your hospital’s wireless infrastructure, Sotera Wireless’s “all-in-one” vital signs surveillance monitoring system called ViSi Mobile, allows bedside staff to keep their eye on life while performing their daily tasks.
This is accomplished by point of care, real-time vital sign data being sent to a centralized monitor. By integrating ViSi Mobile with your hospital’s other technology, alarms can be sent to staff phones and data can be uploaded into patient electronic medical records. See how Sotera Wireless can help with Continuous, Real-time monitoring to minimize patient injury and improve outcomes.
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Sources:
https://health.gov/our-work/health-care-quality/adverse-drug-events
https://www.cdc.gov/medicationsafety/adult_adversedrugevents.html#:~:text=An%20adverse%20drug%20event%20(ADE,as%20often%20as%20younger%20persons.