Improve your Organization’s Financial Performance by Detecting Pressure Injuries Earlier with the Swift Ray 1

Roughly 1 in 3 malpractice claims are from a failure to properly diagnose pressure injuries(PIs) and plaintiffs are favored in 87% of PI lawsuits.¹

PIs are considered a preventable condition because the associated risk factors that lead to them can be identified in advance using tools like the Braden Score. Despite this, up to 1 in 4 patients in skilled nursing facilities may develop a PI.²

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) mandates the reporting of PI rates in the minimum data set (MDS) which is then reported as publicly available quality measures in the form of star ratings. Skilled nursing facilities that struggle to manage and prevent pressure injuries will see their star rating drop, which can be an important factor for residents and their families when selecting a suitable facility. 

The Swift Ray 1 changes how and when you can detect pressure injuries so that you can manage them before they become more serious deep tissue injuries (DTIs). Today, the only practical method to find DTIs is to visually inspect the body for discoloration which can be incredibly challenging, especially on dark pigmented skin where signs of redness and discoloration are further obscured. By taking a thermal image of the patient with the Swift Ray 1 to measure temperature, clinicians get an objective, clinically validated metric to identify the early signs of emerging DTIs below the skin. Temperature anomalies can precede visual appearance of a DTI on the surface of the skin by between 5-18 day.

The operational benefits of the Swift Ray 1 include: 

The Swift Ray 1 is available bundled with our leading Swift Skin and Wound EMR-integrated digital platform.

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^[1] Cuddigan J, Berlowitz DR, Dan R, et al. Pressure ulcers in America: preva- lence, incidence, and implications for the future. Adv Skin Wound Care. 2001;14:208-215.

^[2] Voss AC, Bender SA, Ferguson ML. Long-term care liability for pressure ulcers. J Am Geriatr Soc. 2005;53(9):1587-92.