Tell‐a provider about tele: Reducing overuse of telemetry across 10 hospitals in a safety net system

Background Telemetry is often a scarce resource at hospitals and is important for arrhythmia and myocardial ischemia detection. Overuse of telemetry monitoring leads to alarm fatigue resulting in failure to respond to arrhythmias, patient harm, and possible unnecessary testing. Methods This quality improvement initiative was implemented across NYC Health and Hospitals, an 11‐hospital urban safety net system. The electronic health record intervention involved the addition of a mandatory indication in the telemetry order and a best practice advisory (BPA) that would fire after the recommended time period for reassessment had passed. Results The average telemetry hours per patient encounter went from 60.1 preintervention to 48.4 postintervention, a 19.5% reduction (p