Central Cardiac Monitoring

What is Critical Care Monitoring?

When a patient arrives at GBGH in critical condition – heart attack, stroke, trauma – our care teams have to work fast to get a picture of what’s happening. Assessment & diagnosis begins with an evaluation of vital signs: heart rate, blood pressure, breathing rate and temperature.

After the initial assessment, it is critical that the patient is continuously monitored for any changes, which would alert the team about possible heart, lung or other organ failure.

Continuous monitoring at GBGH is achieved through a network of vital signs monitors at the patient bedside, which feed the patient’s real-time data into a central computer in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), OR, Emergency Department or Ambulatory Care. The care teams are able to view the information for each patient, but must manually transcribe the information from the computer screen into the patient’s medical record. Having the data in the patient record ensures that all members of the entire care team have access to the information for accurate and timely consideration in the delivery of care.

The Need

Most hospitals have invested in the technology that delivers the patient data right into the patient’s medical record – called the Central Monitor Interface. This saves significant time, improves accuracy and provides the entire team with more timely access to the vital information they need to make decisions, identify warning signs and ultimately, save lives.

It also means that patients in need of specialized care – like cardiac interventions at RVH – will receive their life-saving treatment faster, as information can then be shared in real-time with the teams at our partner hospitals.

Replacement of all beside monitors and cardiac monitoring devices are required in all critical care departments at GBGH as the current system is dated and no longer supported as of December 2021.

The investment in the Central Cardiac Monitor Interface for GBGH is critical. 

Critical Care, ICU & OR require 21 units at the cost of $55,000 each. That’s a total investment of over $1.1M.