Ashtabula County Medical Center | ACMC Pulse | Winter 2018

4 ACMC Pulse  • acmchealth.org CAREGIVERS AT ASHTABULA COUNTY Medical Center (ACMC) now have another tool to use while taking care of patients. VitalScout SM is an early warning system that uses technology to visually alert nurses to changes in patient vital signs and to provide them with information needed to determine the significance of those changes. Thanks to its affiliation with Cleveland Clinic, ACMC is one of the first hospitals in the country to use VitalScout SM . Jacquelyn DiFiore What does VitalScout SM do? VitalScout SM assigns a score for heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure, oxygen saturation and whether a patient is using supplemental oxygen to indicate the degree of change from normal values. It then displays a patient-specific, color-coded tile on a computer screen to visually represent a patient’s risk for deterioration. Computer screens in the clinical areas of each hospital unit display color-coded tiles for each patient, identified only by room and bed number. Proactive patient care VitalScout SM gives visual cues to changes in patient condition ACMC Hospitalist Hishita Parikh, MD, shows 2South Nurse Josette Brickman, RN, details about a patient’s vital signs on VitalScout SM —a new software program that provides an instant view of patients’ conditions throughout the hospital. VitalScout SM is another tool for us to help keep our patients safe. It provides a new level of visual data that can be seen from any clinical computer, so nurses, physicians and other caregivers instantly know every patient’s condition and can respond the instant that condition may change. —Jacquelyn DiFiore, RN, MSN, MHA, NEA-BC ACMC Chief Nursing Officer Hospital news