Health

Hospitals Push To Standardize Patient Bracelets

NEW YORK (CBS) ― Hospitals across the country are working together to make visits safer for their patients. They're joining a national movement to standardize color-coding of hospital bracelets designed to alert staffers of potential risks the patients face.

Nelson White had surgery on his knee, but the red and yellow bracelets on his wrist tell a more important story. "The red on in an indication there's an allergy," White explained, "the yellow one is a person at risk of falling."

"Before we had the bracelets, we would have to walk by and maybe we would find the patient on floor," Beth Israel Medical Center Nurse manager Daphne Ridley said.

But the bracelet colors can mean different things for different hospitals. Now, New York's Beth Israel Medical Center is backing a plan to standardize the bracelets in hospitals across the country.

26 states, including Florida, have agreed to use the standardized system and the list is expected to grow.

Nelson believes the bracelets will make his hospital stay safer. "It's only gonna be more advantageous for the people to know who they're dealing with."

Most patients say the bracelets make them feel more secure. Doctors and nurses say the bracelets allow them to provide better care. But there is a downside: the issue of privacy.

The Director of Nursing Education at Beth Israel, Carmen Schmidt, said, "the on that people would be most likely to be concerned about, perhaps, would be DNR." That means "Do Not Resuscitate." Some patients don't want their end-of-life decisions made public. Carmen Schmidt says those patients can opt out. But most don't.

"They usually want people to know that," Schmidt explained, "so that their wishes would be honored."

The push for a national standard began after a near tragedy in Pennsylvania. A nurse confused the color of a DNR bracelet when patient went into cardiac arrest, so that patient almost wasn't revived.

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