For years, the U.S. population has been on an upward growth path. According to the World Bank Group, the estimated average American life expectancy in 2017 was 79 years old, a significant seven years longer than the world average. However, more recent findings from the National Center for Health Statistics show that this trend has come to a hard stop, and suggest that this number is actually declining. If we take a deeper look into this decline, we see that the life expectancy of the younger and middle-aged U.S. demographic (ages 22-44) is actually decreasing. One of the chief causes of this decrease is drug overdose, or more specifically, today’s opioid crisis, which claimed 70,237 American lives in 2017 alone.
Healthcare Facilities In 2019
In order to manage the current life expectancy status quo in the face of the growing population, specifically the impending “silver tsunami” and the opioid epidemic, we need to first take stock of the current state of affairs in healthcare facilities today.
While hospitals and care facilities are intrinsic to patient care and national wellness, they are unfortunately also breeding grounds for infectious germs and diseases. Common hospital room items like privacy curtains, bed rails, IV poles and door handles are full of harmful bacteria. Additionally, weakened older patients have a higher chance of cognitive deterioration (delirium) once they are treated in an unfamiliar environment, which can be challenging for both tending physicians and neighboring patients.
To make matters worse, hospitals, post-acute care facilities and nursing homes have an unfortunate common theme: they are over capacity and undermanned. This means that health staff is juggling more patients at a time which contributes to physician burnout, a serious issue for facilities nation-wide, and more crucially puts patients at risk. When patients do not receive the necessary care or are overlooked, patient health status can be impacted either immediately or in the near future, which can lead to increases inpatient readmissions. These readmissions are a huge financial burden, as patients readmitted to healthcare facilities within 30 days of being released are penalized according to the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program.
The Opioid Crisis – Facts On The Ground
In addition to commonly known issues that healthcare facilities face, over the past decade, a new national epidemic has swept the nation, the opioid crisis. Opioids, used as heavy pain relievers, have caused widespread addiction among patients. Long-term usage of opioids develops a tolerance for the drug and can even lead to patients becoming more sensitive to pain, resulting in patients searching for stronger pain killers like heroin and the cheaper, more potent synthetic fentanyl. On a molecular level, opioids bind to opioid receptors in the brain and produce a dopamine rush, but they can also cause respiratory depression.
Spearheading the fight against opioid abuse is the American Medical Association’s Opioid Task Force, which focuses on state oversight, access to evidence-based treatments for opioid use disorder, access to naxolone (medication used to block the effects of opioids,) and pain management care among other initiatives. The US government is also cracking down on the trafficking of fentanyl and synthetic opioids by putting a laser focus on the manufacturing, marketing, movement, and money behind this harmful industry.
Headway is being made in the battle against opioid addiction, but the facts are that opioid usage is still ubiquitous among healthcare facilities and continue to pose a serious threat to patients.
Using Continuous Monitoring to Even the Playing Field
While population growth and the opioid crisis are fundamentally different, they have a similar common denominator: the need for continuous patient data.
Currently, the vast majority of global health teams use outdated, inefficient “spot checking” methods to monitor general care patients. This means that hospital, post-acute care and nursing home staff are checking patients’ vital signs once every 6-8 hours. The most notable pitfall of spot checking is the “data desert” it creates for health staff, where vital sign readings and patient-specific issues are only monitored and addressed a few times a day. Additionally, these readings can vary depending on measurement tools/equipment and methods, and even staff mood, training, skills, and individual approach towards patient conditions.
For these reasons, there is tremendous value in offering health practitioners accurate, continuous patient data to provide them with a full picture of patient health. This constant flow of accurate data keeps practitioners informed, allowing them to identify key trends in patient vitals and provide proactive care.
Individual patient baselines and trends may be early indications of larger issues starting to develop including sepsis, cardiac arrest, pressure ulcers and more. By catching and alerting health staff to these trends early on, dangerous adverse health events can be successfully prevented and addressed. This preventive maintenance mindset is not only a proven concept for maintaining cars, planes and other machines, but is also highly beneficial for patient care, supporting improved workflows via better patient management and leading to improved patient results and the prevention of future hospital readmissions.
Due to their capacity to cause respiratory depression, opioids are the main culprit behind fatal drug overdoses around the world. Studies have proven that continuous monitoring can detect respiratory depression with a high positive predictive value and a low false rate, which can prove extremely valuable in identifying opioid-induced respiratory depression and preventing dangerous, possibly fatal outcomes.
As 2020 kicks off, our healthcare institutions need to embrace technology and move on from the antiquated methods and processes of the past. With more efficient future-ready tools like continuous patient monitors, health practitioners can utilize aggregated actionable patient data to help support the ever-growing population while simultaneously preventing more pain and suffering from the opioid epidemic.
