To help keep watch of a busy general ward, the IntelliVue Guardian Solution (IGS) aids clinicians in early recognition of subtle signs of patient deterioration and is designed to facilitate faster intervention and enhance patient care. It is the first-ever Early Warning Scoring (EWS) application to reside on a spot-check monitor that provides clinicians on the general floor with direct access to an automated EWS system based on your hospital’s policy.

Early Warning Scoring tools are designed to enable fast detection of at-risk patients. Identifying the right patient at the right time is the goal of EWS.

IGS software reduces many of the manual tasks of documentation and calculation, possibly leading to reduced human error and saving clinician time. IGS also helps improve and document compliance with established patient safety standards by making it easier for clinicians to follow instructions and alert physicians when needed.

Avoid costly transfers and ICU readmissions

Patient safety and quality of care is a priority for hospitals. Standards and protocols are implemented to ensure that hospitals address many areas such as adverse events and to improve recognition and response to changes in a patient’s condition. When patient deterioration goes unnoticed, it leads to increased length of stay, increase demand on hospital resources and a rising cost of care. Many hospitals have instituted Rapid Response Teams to help recognise and manage patient deterioration.

IntelliVue Guardian Solution Early warning score tools enhance communication, automatically trigger the activation of a Medical Review or Rapid Response Team on the general ward. Earlier intervention can potentially lead to a better outcome and at the same time reduce stress for patients, relatives and staff.

Avoid costly transfers and ICU readmissions

EWS allows Ward Teams and Rapid Response Teams to intervene as early as possible, thus reducing length of stays, unnecessary transfers and ICU (re)admissions.

Standardising care across the enterprise

Deploying EWS across your entire clinical enterprise scale can help standardise care for your clinicians and patients. Assessment of patient condition becomes objective and consistent. The Ward Teams and Rapid Response Teams can communicate effectively and accurately with each other based on data captured and scores calculated.

The IntelliVue Guardian Solution (IGS) also helps meet Joint Commission goals in the areas of better recognition and response to changes in a patient’s condition; reducing risk of healthcare associated infections; improving accuracy of patient identification; and enhancing effectiveness of communication among caregivers.

When patient deterioration goes unnoticed, it leads to increased length of stay and a rising cost of care. Many hospitals have instituted Rapid Response Teams to help stop patient deterioration.

Research shows that the use of early warning scoring in combination with Rapid Response Teams may have financial benefits. A recent multi-centre study found that the implementation of such a program significantly reduced hospital length of stay (LOS) among participating U.S. hospitals.

Here's how Philips helps support the identification of patient deterioration:

Easy interoperability to support fast, responsive care

Our approach is highly interoperable - patient data captured at the bed side, automatic scores and Rapid Response Team paging can be interfaced to your EMR or other systems via HL7 protocol. Alerts can be paged or escalated based on your hospital policies ensuring timely intervention and better patient outcomes.

Strong interoperability gets the right data to the right place, when it’s needed IGS along with established safety standards makes it easier to alert physicians when needed.

Rationalise IT requirements

Customisation of data input, score display and Rapid Response Team paging at the IntelliVue MP5SC spot-check monitors, helps to minimise time and costs associated with IT infrastructure and integration.

Help your critical patient data drive clinical decisions through interoperability. In the General Ward, strong interoperability gets the right data to the right place, when it’s needed. IntelliVue Guardian Solution (IGS) makes interoperability easy. It reduces many of the manual tasks of documentation and calculation, which can reduce time and human errors. IGS may also help document compliance with established patient safety standards by making it easier to alert physicians when needed.

IntelliVue Guardian Solution aids in easy and accurate detection of general floor patients at risk of deterioration, potentially helping to avoid costly transfer or readmission to the ICU.

The benefits:

• Aids in early detection and intervention of patients at risk of deterioration
• Helps standardize and meet the Joint Commission goals
• Highly configurable
• Facilitates communication
• Smoothens workflows, reduces errors
• Assists with connectivity and compliance review
• Clinical and Value Added services

Aiding in early detection.

The system detects significant deviations in a patient’s vital signs readings, and automatically verifies the accuracy of the data by performing reassurance measurements at customized intervals.

Your institution, your rules.

IntelliVue Guardian Solution is flexible, allowing each institution to choose parameters and thresholds to match scoring criteria. A configurable action list provides the caregiver with instant recommendations, following the institution's protocol.

Assists rapid response

IntelliVue Guardian Solution helps enable faster activation and intervention of the institution's rapid response or escalation system when appropriate.

• Acquires vital signs (IntelliVue MP5SC patient monitor, IntelliVue Cableless Measurements)
• Automates Early Warning Scoring (EWS) (IntelliVue Guardian Software)
• Detects early signs of deterioration (IntelliVue Guardian Software)
• Informs responsible clinicians for early, effective intervention (IntelliSpace Event Management)
• Connects to hospital enterprise system (IntelliBridge Enterprise)
• Aligns with clinical practices (Clinical Services)
• Assists with integration and implementation (Value Added Services)

Early Warning Scoring (EWS) is used in hospitals with the goal of improving the effectiveness of Rapid Response Teams (RRTs). More and more hospitals are seeking to implement them as an adjunct to RRTs.

A comprehensive review of the published literature on RRTs and EWS was completed. A series of site visits and in-depth interviews with experienced hospitals and published authors were conducted, and 45 nurse managers in sub-acute care units were surveyed with an anonymous web survey instrument.

The findings showed mixed experimental results for both RRTs and EWS. The survey responses and expert interviews indicated a strong positive impression for EWS, but also a critical emphasis on good implementation practices. The article also suggested that execution failures undermine the success of EWS implementations.

EWS has been shown to improve outcomes in specific instances. Hence, following best practices in implementing EWS is critical for hospitals in order to derive meaningful clinical and economic benefits.

Find out how Early Warning Scores help Rapid Response Teams improve outcomes