Severe Bedsores Create Severe
Financial Risk For Health-Care Facilities
It’s an almost weekly occurrence across the country. Either a nursing home or a hospital faces accusations or lawsuits over patients who develop severe bedsores that lead to extreme suffering or, in some cases, death.
One week it’s a now-closed nursing home in California dealing with its third such lawsuit. Another week it’s a San Francisco hospital facing allegations that staff cuts led to an uptick in the number of fragile patients suffering from bedsores. And on yet another occasion it’s a New Jersey nursing home sued by the family of a woman who died after reportedly suffering from a bedsore that wasn’t properly monitored and cared for.
For families, such situations lead to heartache and tragedy. For health facilities, they lead to costly litigation, higher treatment costs and damaged reputations.
“It’s a serious concern for both nursing homes and hospitals, and it has a major impact on the bottom line,” says Nigel Parker, founder and CEO of RashEndZ Inc. (www.RashEndZ.com), a company that developed a skin-aeration liner for incontinence garments that prevents and treats those rashes.
Bedsores, also known as pressure ulcers, affect up to 2.5 million patients annually, according to the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research. Complications include pain, scarring, infection, prolonged rehabilitation, and permanent disability. About 60,000 patients die as a direct result of pressure ulcers each year.
“The patient’s well being is the primary reason this needs to be addressed,” Parker says. “But pressure ulcers also result in 17,000 lawsuits a year, so nursing homes and other health facilities are at risk of liability if they don’t do something about the problem.”
Some health-care facilities have tried to address the mounting pressure-ulcer problem with better employee training and changes in procedures. Parker, an aerospace engineer, decided to tackle it from a different angle – technology.
Parker first learned of the problem several years ago when his cousin, Colleen John, a neonatal ICU nurse, approached him. For 25 years, she had treated severe diaper rashes in very premature babies using standard but ineffective topical-drug therapies. Those premature infants are especially susceptible to dangerous rashes that can develop into pressure ulcers in part because their immature skin is deficient in structural proteins and easily torn, according to the National Institutes of Health.
John decided to try something different and convinced babies’ parents and doctors to let her use the respiratory oxygen source at the babies’ beds to blow oxygen onto the babies’ bottoms. While it was time-consuming, requiring her to stay overtime after 12-hour shifts, and impractical for busy nurses with multiple critically ill babies, she proved a better way was possible.
Missing, though, was technology that could fit into any diaper, connect to any standard source of gaseous respiratory oxygen, continuously deliver that oxygen to the entire baby’s diaper-covered skin, and do so even while there was a mess in the diaper. So she turned to Parker and his engineering skills.
Four years later, after much trial and error, Parker’s company launched REZair™, its flagship general wellness skin-aeration product line of devices that works for both infant and adult patients.
“Pressure ulcers present grave implications for both patients and the health facilities that care for them,” Parker says. “It’s incumbent on all hospitals, nursing homes and other health facilities to prevent them.”
About Nigel Parker
Nigel Parker, founder and CEO of RashEndZ Inc. (www.RashEndZ.com), is a senior management and systems engineer professional with more than 25 years experience in aerospace, medical simulation and other high-tech industries. While working at Honeywell from 1984 to 2001, he worked on the space shuttle, military aircraft and commercial aircraft, among other projects. Parker is the inventor of REZair, a skin-aeration liner that can be inserted inside a diaper, incontinence garment or wound dressing. The liner connects to any air/oxygen source and circulates air or oxygen on rashes, helping to keep the skin dry and speed healing.
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3 Ways To Guard Your Business Against
Data Loss That Could Doom It
Data loss is every business’s nightmare. In fact, the majority of companies that do experience a mass disappearance of vital, computer-kept information never turn their lights on again.
About 60 percent of small businesses that lose data shut down within six months, according to a study released in 2017 by Clutch, a Washington, D.C.-based research firm. Another report, by Gartner, shows a sizeable impact on medium-sized companies as well; 51 percent of those that encounter a major data breakdown close down within two years.
Cyber security experts say those stark numbers underscore the importance of being prepared with adequate security measures. Many businesses are not, according to the Clutch study, including 58 percent of small businesses.
“It basically comes down to the idea that how you protect and treat your data is commensurate with how important you think it is,” says Penny Garbus, co-founder of Soaring Eagle Consulting Inc. (www.SoaringEagle.guru) and co-author of Mining New Gold – Managing your Business Data. “You protect your jewelry and money, but you aren’t protecting your data. If you aren’t, you’re putting your entire business at risk.”
Companies both large and small often try to ensure the security of their IT infrastructure by outsourcing to a third-party security vendor. A recent study on cloud security conducted by Forrester Consulting found that nearly 80 percent of participants saw value in outside security expertise. Garbus gives three main ways that managed security services can save a business from the disaster of data loss:
• Security check-ups. These are essential for cyber security. “The question you must ask yourself is, how much downtime can my business afford,” Garbus says. “One of the best ways to prevent cyber security issues is to have an expert conduct regular health checks on your system. That way if there are any lurking vulnerabilities or potential issues, they can be fixed before causing any damage.”
• Performance measures. This includes analysis of software, server, cloud and firewall Business these days operates in the realm of remote servers, cloud computing and unrelenting security threats. “As the technological landscape evolves and data security has become increasingly important, businesses recognize there’s much more to it than handling issues as they arise,” Garbus says.
• IT development updates. Hackers are becoming more sophisticated every day. For example, ransomware was able to stall private businesses, hospitals, universities, and government agencies. “If you’re handling sensitive data, it’s smart to upgrade the cyber security methods you’ve been using from the beginning of your business,” Garbus says. “Small and medium-size companies aren’t as likely to have a dedicated IT person to oversee the multiple systems, so it behooves them to have a service in place that can keep abreast of changing technology.”
“You might think managed security is mainly for big businesses, but you can certainly make a case that small-to-medium businesses benefit the most,” Garbus says. “In many ways, they have the most to lose.”
About Penny Garbus
Penny Garbus, co-founder of Soaring Eagle Consulting Inc. (www.SoaringEagle.guru), is co-author of Mining New Gold – Managing Your Business Data. She has been working in the data-management field since leaving college when she worked as a data entry clerk for Pitney Bowes Credit. She later ran the training and marketing department of Northern Lights Software.
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