|
Tagging a Tot: Hospitals Embrace Infant Tracking Tech June 10, 2010 Topic: Benefits & Outcomes, Outcomes in the News Fox News highlights some of the advantages of patient/infant tracking that several hospitals across the nation have begun to implement. If you would like more information on how this system can benefit your facility, Contact First Signal! Nurses Find Simple Ways to Improve Satisfaction June 1, 2010 Topic: Outcomes in the News Healthcare leadership is well aware that many tasks keep nurses away from the bedside. There are the obvious ones, such as documentation, collecting medications, and hunting equipment. And there are the not-so-obvious ones, such as answering phone calls from patients’ concerned relatives. Although a relatively minor clinical concern in a nurse’s day, relatives tend to call to check on patients right when nurses are first beginning their shift, when they are trying to hear reports and check in on their patients for the day. To make the process simpler, nurses at Chilton Memorial Hospital in Pompton Plains, NJ, decided to designate a specific time for relatives to call. The decision is part of the organization’s larger Transforming Care at the Bedside initiative, says Joanne Reich, VP and chief nursing officer at Chilton. The TCAB initiative is sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the New Jersey Hospital Association with a goal to improve the quality of care on medical/surgical units. “Our emphasis is on nursing staff taking a critical look at their care environment and how they can increase their satisfaction and effectiveness in care delivery,” says Reich. “Nurses have many interruptions, so they have been working on increasing time at the bedside.” Nurses began tracking the number of calls they were receiving from families of patients and discovered the calls used up a significant amount of time and called them are away from the bedside just as they had started assessing their patients or receiving reports. Having a designated time for families allows patients and families to coordinate the best time in the morning for them to call. Nurses now can plan their mornings better. They can accomplish what they need to do at the start of the shift, and they can ensure they are ready with the information needed when they know the call is coming. The change was supported by leadership and has worked very well. “Nursing leadership recognizes the leader within each nurse,” says Reich, “and that each nurse is a professional and can bring to the table what they feel works best.” Nurses also revamped how patient call bells are treated. In a collaborative project with other disciplines, such as physical therapy and respiratory therapy, the hospital created a “no pass zone.” “It’s a commitment by all of the staff that if patient call bell is lit, no one will pass that room,” says Reich, “without going in and introducing themselves and seeing what’s the patient needs.” Often, the staff member will be able to help the patient, such as by refilling a water pitcher, which increases patient satisfaction. If the staff member can’t help, he or she quickly takes the issue to the patient’s nurse. Reich says the next project nurses are tackling will examine patient environment. This more in-depth project requires consideration of different concepts and ideas to determine what is best for patients and what is needed to implement the ideas. “They want to ensure the patient environment is prepared in the manner that works best for patients,” says Reich. “They’re examining if patients have what they need in the way of water, tissues, food tray, etc. Our goal continues to be providing quality, personalized care to each of our patients. ” [Nurses Find Simple Ways to Improve Satisfaction] via HealthLeaders Smartphones save money and stave off staffing shortages, study finds May 17, 2010 Topic: Outcomes in the News
So say the findings of a white paper published today by Voalté, a Sarasota, Fla.-based developer of point-of-care communications software for iPhones and BlackBerry devices. “Smart Hospitals – Embracing Smartphones at the Point of Care” highlights communication inefficiencies within hospitals that cause confusion and reduce effectiveness. It concludes that smartphones offer a comprehensive and easy-to-adopt solution. Researchers have found that ineffective communication wastes as much as $12 billion nationwide each year, and that frustrations with outmoded systems can lead to nurse dissatisfaction and, ultimately, exacerbate the hospital staffing shortage. But “smartphones offer a solution to many of today’s healthcare communication issues,” the study finds. “With PC-like functionality and advanced capabilities, smartphones provide a single interface to make calls, send texts, manage schedules, organize tasks, view online literature, and receive alerts. Most clinicians are already familiar with smartphones and the devices easily integrate with hospital networks, providing a solid platform for application developers. Mobile healthcare applications allow physicians and nurses easy access to medical information, bringing faster, more informed decision-making to the point of care.” For a typical, 500 bed, acute-care hospital, communication problems between physicians and nurses create an annual $4 million economic burden, the white paper reports, and often needlessly increase the length of hospital stays. Worse, poor communications can adversely impact care. Noisy overhead paging systems can cause nurses to miss calls – particularly when working within patients’ rooms. In addition, most point-of-care staff are saddled with multiple devices – a nurse may carry a pager, PDA and a mobile phone, with each device providing specific functionality and generating its own alarms. The nurse can’t prioritize alarms according to criticality, so a pager buzzes the same tone when a patient wants ice or for a code blue alert. Due in part to these inefficiency and communication problems, nursing dissatisfaction is on the rise. According to a recent study of 43,000 nurses from 700 hospitals, more than 40 percent of U.S. nurses reported being dissatisfied with their jobs – three to four times higher than the average worker. The problem can be self-perpetuating, the study finds. “Nursing shortages and communication problems negatively impact patient safety and increase patient dissatisfaction.This in turn can affect a hospital’s overall rating and reputation, which can drive down HCAHPS and Press Ganey scores and directly impact a hospital’s ability to stay profitable and recruit talented staff.” As smartphones grow increasingly feature-rich and easy-to-use, the devices offer a solution to many of these serious communication shortfalls. Their functionality make them tantamount to “a miniature computer that combines phone, e-mail, texting, and Internet service.” And since they’re already in common use, the learning curve that usually occurs when new equipment is introduced to a workplace would prove minimal. (According to a study by Manhattan Research, 64 percent of U.S. physicians own smartphones and analysts predict penetration will increase to 81 percent by 2012). [Smart Hospitals: Embracing Smartphones at the Point of Care] via Voalté How Quality Will Pay for Hospitals Under New Reform Measures May 13, 2010 Topic: Outcomes in the News A recent article in HealthLeaders Media outlines how new reform measures will affect hospitals. While most hospitals have focused on promoting quality care at their facilities to help decrease costs, quality care will take on a somewhat different meaning under the new healthcare reform law: Hospitals will feel the pressure to maintain continuous quality improvement or risk being penalized under reform incentives scheduled over the next several years, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Health Research Institute report titled “Health Reform: Prospering in a Post-Reform World.” According to the report, the new law can be expected to impact hospitals in three main areas:
The message hospitals need to pay attention to is “don’t get stuck in the bottom quartile, and work towards continuous quality improvement,” according to the report. The bottom quartile will change from year to year as the quality performance of hospitals change. However, at least 1,000 hospitals will end up in the bottom quartile—regardless of the quality provided. Beginning in 2013, high scoring hospitals under VBP will receive a higher payment of 1%—which rises to 2% in 2017 and beyond. In addition to the direct financial impact, the reform law will require that an organization’s quality metrics be publicly available and accessible. In addition to the direct financial impact, hospitals also could feel the impact of consumerism. For years, healthcare has lagged behind in making information easily accessible to consumers, but this has been changing. According to a 2009 PricewaterhouseCoopers consumer survey, individuals are using the Internet as a source for making decisions. Online content was found to edge out physicians as an information source: For instance, 48% of consumers said they use health websites to find information to make decisions about their healthcare. Within this consumer realm, hospital quality information will move “beyond the organization and government websites” to health websites and consumer advocacy sites, the researchers note. In addition, making more quality information available to consumers could impact a system’s perception in the community and payers’ contracting strategies with them. More informed decisions by patients could lead them away from organizations listed as “poor performers”—or those in the bottom quartile of hospitals. For the typical hospital, being on the bottom quartile in terms of quality could mean millions of dollars lost annually. For instance, for a 300-bed community hospital with $50 million in Medicare inpatient net revenue, failure to improve on hospital readmissions (a loss of about $96,780), failure with VBP (a loss of $750,000), and ending up in the lowest quartile for HAC ($500,000), would create a drop of $1.35 million in income. In addition to Medicare, hospitals also will have to learn to live with cuts in Medicaid. Hospitals that care for high numbers of uninsured and Medicaid patients currently receive extra funding from Medicare and Medicaid under the disproportionate share program. But in 2014, Medicare DSH will be reduced 75%—the same year that the insurance exchanges and individual and employer mandates go into effect. [How Quality Will Pay for Hospitals Under New Reform Measures] via HealthLeaders Sonitor ultrasound system saves Saint Michael’s time and money April 12, 2010 Topic: Outcomes in the News
The new systems helps St. Michael’s find equipment that needs maintenance. In the past, nurses have had to spend time away from patients searching for lost equipment, hospital executives said. The hospital’s biomedical engineering team, who are charged with servicing and maintaining the equipment, are also challenged when they can’t find the equipment they’re assigned to manage and maintain. “We do have a lot of equipment that disappears such as wheel chairs, IV pumps and heart monitors, and nurses spend a lot of time looking for equipment,” said Angelo Schittone, VP and CIO at Saint Michael’s. The tracking technology will provide cost savings in other ways. The cost benefit is twofold, Schittone said: “One is we’re able to track equipment so that our technicians can service them more efficiently, which saves in a technician’s time. The other benefit is the equipment is actually maintained on a regular basis so that the equipment should last longer because it’s maintained better,” he said. The tracking system can help nurses schedule patient care with greater efficiency as they move among departments for testing, Schittone said. Real-time location tags on patients let nurses know, for example, if a patient is out of his or her room taking a radiology exam when a tray of food has to be delivered, Schittone said, so they take the food up when the patient returns. [Hospital Tracks Equipment With Real-Time Ultrasound System] InformationWeek |
Outdated hospital communications systems — based on blaring PAs and multiple, often incompatible mobile devices – are causing confusion, reducing efficiency, wasting money, and helping contribute to serious staffing shortages.
As part of an effort to increase efficiency and save money, Saint Michael’s Medical Center will install IBM’s Real-Time Location Services software and Sonitor Technologies’ ultrasound infrastructure to track equipment, alert staff when inventories are low and ensure compliance with patient safety regulations.| 1750 Enterprise Way | Suite 107 Marietta, Georgia 30067 Tel 770-988-8744 | Fax 770-988-9612 Toll Free: 800-882-4396 |
Resources   |
Legal
© 2010 First Signal |
