At the HIMSS 2024 conference earlier this year, Rob Wonnacott, RN, manager of nursing information systems at Michigan Medicine, described the daunting challenges facing his organization.
The problem is that it’s a piece of paper that a doctor prints out from a heart monitor or other device, dates it, timestamped it and initials it, then passes it to another doctor who reads it, interprets it, makes a medical decision and tells the first doctor what to do.
The inefficient paper-strip workflow was specific to two broad challenges affecting the university-based health system: how to get raw data into the hands of physicians instantly, and how to provide data to physicians for many patients across multiple locations.
Providing a higher level of care
Michigan Medicine is not alone in facing this challenge: numerous organizations are reconnecting, reimagining, restructuring and rethinking how they deliver actionable, real-time data to clinicians at the point of care to improve clinical and business outcomes.
The new AHA Market Scan Trailblazers report, “Providing Actionable Data to Clinicians at the Point of Care,” explores these issues and provides a roadmap to follow for organizations looking to improve clinical, business and operational performance.
For Michigan Medicine, the solution was a cloud-based technology platform that gave clinicians access to real-time data for any patient from anywhere, using any connected, HIPAA-compliant device.
The organization initially connected its intensive care units (ICUs), emergency departments, and telemetry beds to the platform without changing workflow. After six months, the system eliminated the need for paper strips, which Wonnacott estimates were as many as 400 per day. The transition generated significant savings by reducing paper and ink costs, printer maintenance expenses, and the time it took to scan the strips into patients’ electronic health records (EHRs). More importantly, it reduced wasted time, allowing them to focus on direct patient care.
4 things to know about how to provide real-time data to clinicians
1 | Explore technology.
Providing clinicians with real-time, actionable data at the point of care is a hot topic. But what does that mean in terms of technology and functionality? It means populating and displaying all the relevant data clinicians need to assess and treat patients in a single, customizable dashboard.
This includes key vital signs as well as metrics from other devices and lines connected to each individual patient. The on-demand dashboard also pulls in EHR data, clinical notes, and diagnostic test results.
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All data is stored securely on a web-based platform, allowing clinicians to access a single dashboard from a bedside display, tablet or smartphone. Users can access all their data 24/7 from any device, for one patient in one location, multiple patients in one location, or multiple patients in multiple locations.
2 | Make a list of your use cases.
Explore a wide range of opportunities like these examples: Conduct retrospective quality assurance reviews with a continuous and complete data set Use split screen to simultaneously monitor patients while completing clinical documentation Remotely monitor patients during cardiovascular management therapy sessions Collaborate with revenue cycle staff to provide data to support claim delays, denials, and appeals.
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Think big here: the only limit to your use cases is your organization’s imagination of what you can do with the data.
3 | Barriers to adoption are expected.
Hospitals and health systems that want to provide actionable, real-time data to clinicians at the point of care will face implementation barriers before projects begin and once they are up and running.
Staff may see this as a point solution that solves one problem in one unit, rather than an enterprise-wide opportunity to dramatically change care delivery. The organization may not have an effective process for deploying the solution across the enterprise. From a technology perspective, the hospital or health system may not easily have interoperable systems that can feed into one platform. Those who have experienced previous failed technology installations may be skeptical of this approach and its ability to scale across the organization.
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Anticipating these pre- and post-barriers allows change agents to develop plans to overcome each one before it threatens to derail adoption.
Four | Measure your success.
Because there are many barriers to adoption, once the technology is up and running, it is important to identify, track, and report on key performance indicators (KPIs). KPIs can be broken down into a variety of categories, including administrative (e.g., claim denial rates, physician turnover, patient satisfaction scores), clinical (e.g., healthcare associated infections, mortality, readmission rates), financial (e.g., full-time equivalents, ICU length of stay, total length of stay), and operational (e.g., patient throughput, ventilator days).
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Based on the right KPIs, the return on investment is expected to be significant. The most important KPIs are tracking clinical outcomes for patients and a productive work environment and workflow for clinicians.
