How is PCT different from APACHE?
PCT is used throughout the hospital to improve patient care by letting doctors and nurses see downtrends that might go unnoticed, and so is an important part of improving quality of care, and improving patient outcomes. APACHE only applies to the ICU. It is explicitly NOT used for patient care. It IS used to compare the quality of one ICU to another on a statistical basis.

My hospital's Information Technology department is overwhelmed. How difficult is it to install the PCT at a hospital?
We estimate that the entire installation process takes two days of one person's time.

Will the PCT impact the response time of my hospital's EMR?
No. In controlled tests at Sarasota Memorial Hospital, the system IT people were unable to detect any impact of the PCT on performance or response time. When we pull data from the hospital's EMR database, we do it with a "no-lock" protocol. This means that no query ever waits for us.

Can the PCT be installed at a hospital with any EMR?
Yes. We are already installed at Eclipsys hospitals, and we have plans to integrate with all popular EMRs.

I see that you relate the Rothman Index to 48-mortality. How accurately do you predict death?
We do not predict death. The graph you saw was prepared to show that the RI correlates with another measure of patient condition. Whether someone lives or dies depends on more than their condition. It depends on the nature of the disease and the therapy being applied.

How does the PCT save money for a hospital?
If we avoid a crisis by detecting a downtrend earlier, then we avoid expensive treatments and extended stays. We also know that the healthcare system will save money, because we have seen our clinical trial reduce the number of people sent to skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) by about 10%. Each person who goes home instead of to a SNF saves the system an average of $8400. For a hospital with 20,000 patient visits, this translates to about $4 million of savings per year in avoided SNF/rehabilitation costs.

Who else does what you do?
No one. A company has attempted to monitor patient condition using vital signs alone and have in fact published a study showing that their system essentially does not provide any benefit beyond individual vital sign monitors.

My doctors are great and they DO know how their patients are. Why would they need this system?
All doctors would benefit from having a back-up,an assistant which provides context for an examination. Note we do NOT tell doctors what to do. We just say, "Be a doctor". This patient is declining, figure out why and help him.

What is your overall message?
EMRs alone do not automatically save either money or lives, but they are a foundation for applications such as ours, which leverage this digitalization of the medical record to improve the quality of care, lower costs, and save lives.