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(Original press release) As part of its ongoing commitment to provide high-quality, patient-centered medical care, University Hospitals (UH) today announced that it has implemented the PIVO needle-free device from San Francisco-based innovator Velano Vascular at UH Cleveland Medical Center for inpatient blood draws. UH is the first health system in Ohio to deliver this enhanced experience to patients and is helping to pioneer a bold national movement to adopt a more humane standard of care for blood draws.
“As an institution, we continually look for innovative new technologies that improve the delivery and quality of care we provide,” said UH Cleveland Medical Center President Daniel I. Simon, MD. “As caregivers, we strive to serve our patients in the most humane and personal way possible. This new procedure makes it possible for us to do both, eliminating the pain and anxiety associated with blood collection while advancing our own high standards and practices.”
The adoption of PIVO at UH’s flagship academic campus follows evaluation of the technology and the procedure in multiple UH Cleveland Medical Center inpatient units. PIVO connects to an indwelling peripheral IV catheter, commonly used in hospitalized patients, and enables practitioners to extract high-quality blood samples from the vein, eliminating the need for multiple needle-sticks.
“Our evaluation and collaboration proved that PIVO delivers high-quality blood draws in an elegant manner that enhances the patient-practitioner relationship, reduces rejected blood samples, and provides an alternative to accessing central lines for blood collection,” said Cheryl O’Malley, Vice President Patient Care Services and Nursing, UH Cleveland Medical Center. “We are excited to bring this procedure and technology to our entire academic hospital, especially for our most vulnerable patients like those at UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s.”
More than 400 million blood draws occur annually in hospitals in the U.S., informing as much as 70 percent of all clinical decisions. Many of these are conducted in a hospital setting on patients that receive as many as three blood draws daily. This number can increase dramatically for the 30 percent of U.S. hospital patients that are considered Difficult Venous Access (DiVA) due to obesity, age, and disease, a condition that makes blood collection more challenging.
Velano Vascular Chief Executive and co-founder Eric M. Stone is a Northeast Ohio native and former UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital patient. “As a chronic disease sufferer and over the course of multiple hospitalizations as a teenager, I developed a clinical fear of needles,” said Stone. “My personal experience as a patient has informed our person-centered mission at Velano to enable more humane care. Coming full circle, back to UH and Rainbow, to make this technology a national standard of care will enable our children and their parents to have their blood drawn in a gentler way.”
About University Hospitals
Founded in 1866, University Hospitals serves the needs of patients through an integrated network of 18 hospitals, more than 50 outpatient health centers and 200 physician offices in 15 counties throughout northern Ohio. The system’s flagship academic medical center, University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, located on a 35-acre campus in Cleveland’s University Circle, is affiliated with Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. The main campus also includes University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital, ranked among the top children’s hospitals in the nation; University Hospitals MacDonald Women’s Hospital, Ohio’s only hospital for women; and University Hospitals Seidman Cancer Center, part of the NCI-designated Case Comprehensive Cancer Center. UH is home to some of the most prestigious clinical and research programs in the nation, including cancer, pediatrics, women’s health, orthopedics, radiology, neuroscience, cardiology and cardiovascular surgery, digestive health, transplantation and urology. UH Cleveland Medical Center is perennially among the highest performers in national ranking surveys, including “America’s Best Hospitals” from U.S. News & World Report. UH is also home to Harrington Discovery Institute at University Hospitals – part of The Harrington Project for Discovery & Development. UH is one of the largest employers in Northeast Ohio with 26,000 employees. UH’s vision is “Advancing the science of health and the art of compassion,” and its mission: “To Heal. To Teach. To Discover.” Follow UH on Facebook @UniversityHospitals and Twitter @UHhospitals. For more information, go to UHhospitals.org.
About Velano Vascular
Velano Vascular is a medical device innovator committed to reducing the pain, risk and inefficiencies of traditional blood collection practices while enhancing the clinical domain of vascular access. The company’s revolutionary FDA-approved PIVO device expands the use of peripheral IV lines for frequent, high quality and needle free blood draws, aiming to deliver painless, compassionate care for hospital inpatients, a safer practice for caregivers, and a more financially responsible alternative for health systems. More information is available at www.velanovascular.com