HMHP monitors provide for new cardiac technology

Staff report

youngstown

Humility of Mary Health Partners has adopted a new cardiac technology that will provide its hospitals with a continuous heart-monitoring system.

HMHP has purchased six NICOM Reliant monitors, a noninvasive instrument that provides continuous monitoring of cardiac output and blood flow.

Two of the monitors are used in the surgery and surgical intensive-care unit at St. Elizabeth Health Center in Youngstown. The others are in the emergency departments at St. Elizabeth, St. Joseph Health Center in Warren, St. Elizabeth Boardman Health Center and the St. Elizabeth Emergency and Diagnostic Center in Austintown.

The monitor provides physicians and nurses with continuous cardiac output and other clinical information previously only available by inserting a catheter through the veins and into the patient’s heart.

Such catheter insertions have been associated with additional costs and potential complications that can affect patient outcome and prolong the length of stay, hospital officials said.

“Having these monitors will improve health care, especially for individuals at a higher risk of heart and blood-pressure complications,” Howard Dickey-White, director of emergency medicine at St. Elizabeth Health Center said in a statement. “We are pleased to be the first hospital to make this technology available to patients in Northeast Ohio.”

The monitors use BIOREACTANCE technology, a proprietary method of advanced electronics and computer processing that accurately calculates the flow of blood through the heart using four skin- surface electrodes.

The technology was developed by Cheetah Medical Inc., an Israeli medical services provider that provides advanced monitoring systems for acute-care facilities.