Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center awarded ECRI Institute Health Devices Achievement Award

Masimo (Nasdaq: MASI), the inventor of Pulse CO-Oximetry™ and Measure-Through Motion and Low Perfusion pulse oximetry, is pleased to report that Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (Lebanon, New Hampshire) has received the 4th Annual ECRI Institute Health Devices Achievement Award yesterday for an innovative patient monitoring project that uses its Masimo SET pulse oximetry and Masimo Patient SafetyNet remote monitoring and clinician notification system.  The award-winning project enabled clinicians to significantly improve post-surgical patient outcomes and reduce hospital costs by $817,000 in its first year.  In their announcement of the award, the ECRI Institute honored Dartmouth-Hitchcock for "the most exceptional example of an initiative undertaken by an ECRI Institute member to improve patient safety, reduce costs, or otherwise facilitate better strategic management of health technology."  ECRI Institute's Vice President of Health Technology Evaluation and Safety, Jim Keller, presented the award this morning to Jeanne Avery, Senior Clinical Quality Specialist, and Ken Lee, Clinical Manager, Biomedical Engineering, at Dartmouth-Hitchcock.

"We are very proud of this award and the accomplishments and environment of care that it represents," stated George Blike, M.D., Quality and Patient Safety Officer, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. "Creating excellence in patient care today requires both a high-tech and high-touch approach.  We believe that together, Masimo's innovative technologies and our implementation truly made a difference, which is incredibly rewarding for everyone involved."

Joe Kiani, Chairman and CEO of Masimo, stated, "We are delighted to see the ECRI Institute recognize Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center for their excellence in implementing and managing health technology to drive improved patient outcomes, safety, and cost savings.  Researchers and clinicians at Dartmouth-Hitchcock should all be congratulated for their visionary work, its potential to advance the standard and quality of care, and its impact on healthcare for all patients.  They prove that great technology in the hands of caring clinicians can make a huge difference in not only the lives of patients, but in lowering the cost of healthcare."

ECRI Institute, an independent nonprofit that researches the best approaches to improving patient care, selected Dartmouth-Hitchcock for excellence in health technology management based on their initiative to decrease failure to rescue events—instances of severe patient harm (such as death or disability) that occur because a serious deterioration in the patient's condition is not detected in time.  Dartmouth-Hitchcock's winning healthcare initiative, "A Multidisciplinary Approach to Improving Patient Safety in the Adult Medical/Surgical Population through Earlier Detection of Patient Deterioration Using Surveillance Monitoring," leverages a new application of pulse oximetry—continuously monitoring post-surgical patients on the general floor from admission to discharge—using a combination of advanced medical technologies—Measure-Through Motion and Low Perfusion pulse oximetry with Masimo SET and automatic clinician notification with Masimo Patient SafetyNet.  The implementation resulted in 65% fewer rescue events and 48% fewer ICU transfers, which freed up 135 ICU-days annually for more critically-ill patients.