Background: Telemetry is an essential tool for real-time monitoring of the heart rhythm and QRS morphology of a patient. American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association had published their respective practice standards for in-hospital cardiac monitoring for the detection of cardiac arrhythmias. Nonetheless, these recommendations were mostly based on expert opinions which focused almost [...]

Background: Telemetry is utilized on high risk cardiac patients for monitoring of arrthymias. Guidelines providing clear monitoring indications have been published by AHA to reduce overuse of this resource, which can lead to increased care costs and false positive alerting. Despite the above evidence, our hospital has a high volume of patients on telemetry causing [...]

Background: During 2016, the total billed cost of cardiac monitoring neared 4 million dollars at our institution and many patients were observed on the monitor without approved indication as published by the American Heart Association’s (AHA) guidelines published in 2014. The overutilization of cardiac monitoring constitutes a misappropriation of resources which results in undue health [...]

Background: Telemetry is an often overused and expensive medical monitoring device designed to measure cardiac disease, arrhythmias or suspected heart abnormalities. In an effort to describe appropriate electrocardiographic monitoring in the hospital setting, the American Heart Association (AHA) put forth guidelines for appropriate telemetry usage. Despite these well-defined recommendations, many patients are monitored on telemetry [...]

Background: Over the past fifty years, remote cardiac monitoring (“telemetry”) has become routine for many patients admitted to the hospital. Telemetry has many clinical benefits and is recommended by the American Heart Association for a limited set of indications, but is often inappropriately used. Overutilization of telemetry can lead to unnecessary tests and procedures, may [...]

Background: Cardiac telemetry monitoring in hospitalized patients is an often overused resource. In a chart review at our institution, 30% of inpatient days on general medicine services involved telemetry use outside of American Heart Association guidelines. Telemetry overuse is driven both by use outside of accepted indications and by continuing telemetry monitoring longer than clinically [...]