“Maria Cvach, an alarm expert and director of policy management and integration for Johns Hopkins Health System, found that on one step-down unit (a level below intensive care) in the hospital in 2006, an average of 350 alarms went off per patient per day—from the cardiac monitor alone….
“Bed alarms have proliferated since 2008 when the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services declared hospital falls should ‘never’ happen and stopped paying for injuries related to those falls. After that policy change, the odds of nurses using a bed alarm increased 2.3 times, according to a study led by Dr. Ronald Shorr, director of the Geriatric Research, Education and Clinical Center at the Malcom Randall Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Gainesville, Fla. The alarms have become a standard feature in new hospital beds.” Meanwhile, in 2017 the same federal agency “began discouraging their widespread use in nursing homes, arguing that audible bed or chair alarms may be considered a ‘restraint’ if the resident ‘is afraid to move to avoid setting off the alarm.'” [Melissa Bailey, Kaiser Health News via Virginia Postrel; earlier here, here, and here]