‘Leading the way’: Methodist’s $1.3 million Centralized Telemetry Unit benefits patients and staff

Methodist Health System (MHS) has completed a major upgrade to its behind-the-scenes cardiac telemetry efforts.

The $1.3 million Centralized Telemetry Unit opened last week at Methodist Hospital, completing a yearslong project that brings numerous benefits to cardiac patients and the staff members monitoring their heart rhythms.

“In the state and maybe regionally, it really is the only space that’s designed specifically for this,” said unit coordinator Tom Riss, CCT, CRAT. “It really is leading the way as far as modernization and centralization.”

Telemetry’s growth and importance

As cardiac telemetry services became common in the 1980s, Riss said, hospitals didn’t have specially designed spaces for telemetry technicians. Instead, they were often placed on-site wherever there was room – a practice that was common nationwide. Meanwhile, MHS had one hospital – not four – and the technology to centralize telemetry services was still years off.

While monitoring patients’ rhythms is important work, it doesn’t have to be done bedside. And one telemetry tech can monitor multiple patients, ready to instantly call bedside staff in the event of an issue. 

“Telemetry techs are always monitoring alarms, heart rates, etc.,” said KC Humphrey, EdD, OTR/L, manager of Methodist’s Clinical Command Center. “So if a nurse isn’t in a room, they’re a second set of eyes. It’s physically impossible for a nurse to be watching this all the time.”

Benefits of the Centralized Telemetry Unit

With the goal of improving efficiency and patient monitoring, Methodist’s Information Technology (IT) Department and clinical leaders from across MHS teamed up to launch the Centralized Telemetry Unit project in late 2022.

Prior to the project, telemetry techs at Methodist Hospital monitored patients at Methodist Hospital and Methodist Women’s Hospital. In August, they added monitoring of Methodist Fremont Health patients. That freed up staff, including nurses and certified nursing assistants (CNAs), to focus their time on bedside patient care. And last week, in conjunction with the opening of and move to the state-of-the-art Centralized Telemetry Unit, the staff began monitoring patients at Methodist Jennie Edmundson Hospital. CNAs monitoring rhythms there were given the option to move to the new unit or stay and perform other duties. No staff members were let go as a result of the move.

The new Centralized Telemetry Unit is now home to over 45 telemetry techs, many of whom had input in the unit’s design and operation. 

Among the unit’s benefits: 

Environment: The unit offers the best physical work environment in the region, Humphrey said. Among the features are modern workspaces and ample space for team huddles, training and unit expansion.

Technology: The unit employs the latest technology to benefit staff and patients. Gone are the days of printing the record of the patient’s heart rhythm, then uploading it to their electronic medical record (EMR). Also gone are written observations and notes that must be loaded to the EMR. Now, the unit’s software syncs directly with the EMR, automatically entering information into a patient’s chart.

Staffing: The centralized space allows for more efficient coverage of patients. For example, Methodist Fremont Health had the same number of telemetry techs working whether the number of patients was low or high. With the centralized model, techs monitor a more consistent overall number of patients and can better handle spikes in patient volume.

“What the telemetry techs do is of vital importance to the patients, and what they provide, the medical staff makes decisions on,” Humphrey said. “Now we have this great environment that they deserve so much.”

Methodist pushes ahead

The Centralized Telemetry Unit is the newest part of Methodist’s Clinical Command Center, which also includes the Bed Coordination and Transfer Center. The Clinical Command Center aims to provide centralized clinical services to reduce the burden on bedside staff while improving efficiency, flexibility and responsiveness across the health system. 

MHS believes the Centralized Telemetry Unit helps meet those goals.

“With a movement of this magnitude, there are so many moving parts, but the most important of those are patients with cardiac issues who need continuous monitoring to keep them safe,” Humphrey said. “This was a huge undertaking from every aspect, with basically every department involved: Construction, Project Management, IT, Biomed (Trimedx), Maintenance, Informatics, Environmental Services, Administration, Nursing and our vendors.”