Intermountain Healthcare Now Delivers the Nation’s First “One Stick” Hospitalization for Inpatient Blood Draws

Salt Lake City, UTAH, Sept. 12, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- As part of its commitment to transform the patient and caregiver experience while delivering high quality care, Intermountain Healthcare today announced that it is the first integrated health system in the U.S. to implement a new needle-free blood collection system across all of its 22 hospitals. Following 180,000 PIVO™ blood draws during evaluation and subsequently through a system-wide rollout, Intermountain is now delivering the nation’s future standard-of-care in patient and practitioner-centered blood collection and vascular access.

 "It is impossible to remove the blood draw from medicine, but Intermountain is showing the world that you can remove the needle from inpatient blood draws," said Kim Henrichsen, Intermountain Healthcare senior vice president of Clinical Operations & chief nursing executive. "We are incredibly proud of the fact that needles are no longer the standard for this critical medical procedure at Intermountain. We look forward to helping the rest of the nation embrace this change and respectfully challenge the status quo." 

Intermountain collaborated with San Francisco-based Velano Vascular to test, refine and pilot the company’s needle free PIVO technology. The device connects to an indwelling peripheral IV catheter, commonly used for access and infusion in hospitalized patients, enabling practitioners to extract blood from the vein. PIVO is now available and in use for inpatient blood drawing at all 22 Intermountain hospitals and will be implemented at the 23rd and newest Intermountain Layton Hospital, opening later this year.

During the organization’s clinical collaboration with Velano, and as part of the system-wide rollout initiated last fall, Intermountain has conducted extensive PIVO blood draws. The results have been overwhelmingly positive, demonstrating a high quality of collection, a vastly improved experience and satisfaction for both patients and practitioners, and reduced risk of injury and enhanced efficiency, particularly in difficult venous access populations, for hospital practitioners. 

One 40-year old Intermountain patient shared, "The new (PIVO) device saves me from 10 or more needle stabs in a day for blood every 4-6 hours. It has been phenomenal and completely painless – I don’t feel a thing and even fall asleep through it. PIVO saves me from the normal stress and anxiety of a poke."

"Innovating around the obvious for such a seemingly simple and overlooked practice can have a massive impact on a hospital system, and the experience of both its patients and caregivers," said Todd Dunn, director of Innovation at Intermountain. "Driven by our passion to Design for People, this program proved that innovation is a collaborative team sport, bringing together partners in empathy like Velano with our own clinicians and patients to arrive at a new standard that we can help champion nationwide for the millions of others who still endure outdated, antiquated approaches to drawing blood."

Intermountain Healthcare is a Utah-based not-for-profit system of 22 hospitals, 170 clinics, a Medical Group with about 2,300 employed physicians and advanced practice clinicians, a health plans group called SelectHealth, and other medical services. Intermountain is widely recognized as a leader in transforming healthcare through high quality and sustainable costs. For more information about Intermountain, visit www.intermountainhealthcare.org.