New Study Finds That Using Masimo Technologies to Continuously Monitor General Floor Patients Reduces Costs
Universal Surveillance Monitoring with Masimo SET® Pulse Oximetry and Patient SafetyNet™ – Repeatedly Shown to Improve Patient Outcomes and Save Lives – Also Projected to Yield Significant Cost Savings
IRVINE, Calif. --(BUSINESS WIRE)
Masimo (NASDAQ: MASI) today announced the findings of a study published in the Journal of Patient Safety in which Dr. George Blike and colleagues at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire demonstrated that use of Masimo technologies to continuously monitor general floor patients can yield significant cost savings.1
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Continuous Patient Monitoring with Masimo SET® Pulse Oximetry and Patient SafetyNet™
In prior studies, the clinical outcome benefits of continuously monitoring patients using Masimo SET® and Patient SafetyNet™ have been shown to include lower mortality, improved resuscitative outcomes, and fewer rapid response team activations and transfers to higher-acuity care units, achieved through earlier detection and intervention to prevent patient deterioration.2-5 Now, in this new retrospective analysis – involving 3-1/2 years of data and almost 32,000 patients – the Dartmouth-Hitchcock investigative group has demonstrated that continuous patient surveillance monitoring resulted in increased net operating margin (OM), and is thus cost-effective, due to the financial impact of avoiding care escalations while taking into account the cost of implementing such a system.
Each rescue event avoided had a positive OM impact of approximately $5,500 per patient and each transfer event avoided, about $10,700 per patient. For Dartmouth-Hitchcock, they calculated that each 10% reduction in rescues and transfers led to a projected savings of about $350,000 and $409,000 a year, respectively, for 200 general floor beds equipped with Masimo monitoring. The researchers concluded that their findings strongly support that “[s]urveillance monitoring is operationally cost effective, generating significant operating margin impact when associated with reductions in patients requiring rescue and/or transfer.”
Daniel Cantillon, M.D., Chief Medical Officer for Masimo, commented, “This study clearly demonstrates that continuously monitoring all patients costs hospital systems less – not more – while solidly debunking the myth that cost remains a barrier to achieving the superior clinical outcomes associated with surveillance monitoring. We believe these findings may even be generalizable beyond the hospital, to institutions such as freestanding ERs and ambulatory surgery centers, and we encourage them to conduct their own cost-benefit analyses. We’re hopeful that key opinion leaders and professional societies will consider these important data in updating clinical practice guidelines.”
As the researchers note, healthcare organizations often balk at the up-front costs of implementing a continuous patient monitoring surveillance system. Based on their own experience, the Dartmouth-Hitchcock team sought to refute that contention by quantifying the savings associated with improved patient outcomes.
In their previous investigations, published between 2010 and 2021, the researchers analyzed the impact of surveillance monitoring on patient outcomes by implementing a system that included continuous pulse oximetry monitoring with Masimo SET® and Masimo bedside devices, configured to help detect patient deterioration on post-surgical patients in the general care setting, paired with Masimo Patient SafetyNet, a supplemental monitoring platform, that made patients’ data available to clinicians at centralized view stations. Following a successful implementation in a smaller unit, where they found a 65% reduction in rapid response team activations and a 48% reduction in transfers back to the ICU,2 the Masimo continuous monitoring system was expanded to cover more than 200 inpatient beds in all medical and surgical units. After ten years of operation, they reported that the system was associated with a 50% reduction in unplanned transfers and 60% reduction in rescue events3 while achieving zero preventable deaths or brain damage due to opioid-induced respiratory depression.4 The benefits of Masimo SET® with Patient SafetyNet were subsequently and independently confirmed in a 2022 study published by a large, 1,200-bed hospital system in Saudi Arabia, which additionally found a reduction in all-cause mortality and improved resuscitative outcomes when comparing the time periods pre- and post-deployment of Masimo’s continuous patient monitoring surveillance system.5
The current Dartmouth-Hitchcock cost-savings study builds upon an earlier published cost-benefit analysis estimating that use of their Masimo system was saving Dartmouth-Hitchcock $1.48 million each year.6 This newly published study applies more rigorous and granular methods in calculating financial savings associated with the improved outcomes made possible by continuous general floor monitoring. To do so, the research team examined retrospective patient data for 31,993 general floor patients, admitted over a 3-1/2 year interval from July 2016 to December 2019, and methodically calculated the operating margins for patients with “uncomplicated” and various degrees of “complicated” care experiences.
All of the enrolled patients received standardized continuous SpO2 monitoring using Masimo SET® pulse oximetry on tetherless Radius PPG® sensors, with automated data transfer to Patient SafetyNet; vital signs were spot-checked every four hours. The patients were segmented into groups depending on whether they a) survived to hospital discharge without rescue or transfer (“uncomplicated” patient scenarios); b) needed rescue but not transfer to a higher level of care (HLOC); c) needed rescue and transfer to HLOC; and d) died in the hospital (increasingly severe complications). Of the enrolled patients, 92.7% had uncomplicated stays, and 7.5% suffered various degrees of complication. The researchers tracked each patient’s associated cost, revenue, and operating margin to calculate an average operating margin for each group, which served as the primary outcome for further analysis.
The researchers found that the uncomplicated group was associated with an average operating gain of $2,016 per patient (as well as a median length of stay, or LOS, of 3.2 days) and an overall gain of $17M per year. Conversely, patients who needed rescue (but not transfer) were associated with an average operating loss of $3,516 per patient (and a median LOS of 6.7 days), a net loss of about $2.3M per year. Avoiding a rescue (i.e. a patient’s stay becoming classed as uncomplicated) had a net favorable OM impact of $5,532. Patients who went on to need transfer to HLOC were associated with an average loss of $8,746 per patient (and a median LOS of 9.8 days), a net loss of $3.4M per year. Avoiding a transfer after a rescue had a net favorable OM impact of $5,230 and avoiding a transfer and rescue altogether (i.e. becoming uncomplicated) had a net favorable OM impact of about $10,762.
Extrapolating from these findings, the researchers calculated that through the use of the Masimo supplemental monitoring system, the OM impact of reducing rescues and transfers by 10% – a conservative figure based on their previously reported experiences – translates into approximate net positive total margin impact of $350,000 and $409,000 per year, respectively, for a hospital with 200 Masimo-monitored beds. Though the exact amount will of course vary by institution, their methodology, as they noted, is “generalizable and easy to replicate” – a potential roadmap for other institutions to follow when evaluating the impact of implementing continuous patient monitoring.
The authors concluded, “This study adds to the literature refuting the contention that universal surveillance monitoring of patients in the general care setting is too costly to implement and sustain. … These data strongly support that continuous monitoring and rapid response are cost effective and affordable on an annual operational basis. More importantly, hundreds of patients per year at the study institution avoid lengthy intensive care unit stays and the associated suffering and harm.”
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The use of the trademark Patient SafetyNet is under license from University HealthSystem Consortium.
References
- Blike G, McGrath S, Perreard I, and McGovern K. Estimating the Financial Impact of Surveillance Monitoring in the General Care Setting. J Patient Saf. 2025. DOI: 1097/PTS.0000000000001392.
- Taezner A et al. Impact of pulse oximetry surveillance on rescue events and intensive care unit transfers: A before-and-after concurrence study. J Am Soc Anesthesiol. 2010;112(2):282-287
- McGrath S et al. Surveillance monitoring management for general care units: strategy, design, and implementation. Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf. 2016;42(7):293-302. doi:10.1016/s1553-7259(16)42040-4.
- McGrath S et al. Inpatient respiratory arrest associated with sedative and analgesic medications impact of continuous monitoring on patient mortality and severe morbidity. J Patient Saf. 2021;17(8):557-561.
- Balshi et al. Tele-Rapid Response Team (Tele-RRT): The effect of implementing patient safety network system on outcomes of medical patients—A before and after cohort study. PLoS One. 2022 Nov 22;17(11):e0277992. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0277992.
- Taezner A and Blike G. Patient surveillance – the Dartmouth experience. APSF Newsl. 2012;Spring-Summer:1-4.
About Masimo
Masimo (NASDAQ: MASI) is a global medical technology company that develops and produces a wide array of industry-leading monitoring technologies, including innovative measurements, sensors, patient monitors, and automation and connectivity solutions. Our mission is to improve life, improve patient outcomes, reduce the cost of care, and take noninvasive monitoring to new sites and applications. Masimo SET® Measure-through Motion and Low Perfusion™ pulse oximetry, introduced in 1995, has been shown to outperform other pulse oximetry technologies in over 100 independent and objective studies, which can be found at www.masimo.com/evidence/featured-studies/feature. Masimo SET® is estimated to be used on more than 200 million patients around the world each year and is the primary pulse oximetry at all 10 top U.S. hospitals as ranked in the 2025 Newsweek World’s Best Hospitals listing. Additional information about Masimo and its products may be found at www.masimo.com.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release includes forward-looking statements as defined in Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, in connection with the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are statements other than statements of historical facts that address activities, events or developments that we expect, believe or anticipate will or may occur in the future. These forward-looking statements include, among others, statements regarding the financial impact that implementing continuous monitoring with Masimo SET® technology may have at a healthcare institution; reductions in rescue events; reductions in transfers to higher level of care; improved patient outcomes; and other matters that do not relate strictly to historical facts or statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. These statements are often identified by the use of words such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “continue,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “on-going,” “opportunity,” “plan,” “potential,” “predicts,” “forecast,” “project,” “seek,” “should,” “will,” or “would,” the negative versions of these terms and similar expressions or variations, but the absence of such words does not mean that a statement is not forward-looking. These forward-looking statements are based on current expectations about future events affecting us and are subject to risks and uncertainties, all of which are difficult to predict and many of which are beyond our control and could cause our actual results to differ materially and adversely from those expressed in our forward-looking statements as a result of various risk factors, including, but not limited to: the rate of adoption of continuous monitoring by hospitals and other healthcare institutions; changes in clinical practice guidelines; and other factors discussed in the “Risk Factors” section of our most recent periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including our most recent Form 10-K and Form 10-Q, all of which you may obtain for free on the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in our forward-looking statements are reasonable, we do not know whether our expectations will prove correct. All forward-looking statements included in this press release are expressly qualified in their entirety by the foregoing cautionary statements. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of today’s date. We do not undertake any obligation to update, amend or clarify these statements or the “Risk Factors” contained in our most recent reports filed with the SEC, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required under the applicable securities laws.
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