Patient Engagement. The Patient Experience. Patient Satisfaction. It’s refreshing to see so much focus on the patient in today’s healthcare landscape, especially in the health information technology (IT) sector.
Now that the vast majority of hospitals have converted to electronic medical records (EMRs), the focus for IT departments is turning to technology that improves the patient experience. So far, a lot of talk has centered on patient portals – an extension of the EMR that allows patients to view their medical records and communicate with providers online. While portals certainly can have an impact before and after the patient visit, IT departments are also being asked to help improve the patient visit itself.
As a nurse who has performed care at the bedside, and now as a consultant who delivers technology education to clinicians, I have a unique perspective on a wide variety of systems that improve the patient experience without burdening nurses with more tasks. Here’s just a few of the interesting technologies I’ve worked with recently, which should be on the radar of IT departments and nurse leaders.
By Kimberly Barnhardt, MBA/MHA, BS, RN, CPSO, Clinical Inservices Solutions
Patient Engagement. The Patient Experience. Patient Satisfaction. It’s refreshing to see so much focus on the patient in today’s healthcare landscape, especially in the health information technology (IT) sector.
Now that the vast majority of hospitals have converted to electronic medical records (EMRs), the focus for IT departments is turning to technology that improves the patient experience. So far, a lot of talk has centered on patient portals – an extension of the EMR that allows patients to view their medical records and communicate with providers online. While portals certainly can have an impact before and after the patient visit, IT departments are also being asked to help improve the patient visit itself.
As a nurse who has performed care at the bedside, and now as a consultant who delivers technology education to clinicians, I have a unique perspective on a wide variety of systems that improve the patient experience without burdening nurses with more tasks. Here’s just a few of the interesting technologies I’ve worked with recently, which should be on the radar of IT departments and nurse leaders.
One of the most promising is real-time locating systems (RTLS). Long used in hospitals to track the location of mobile equipment such as IV pumps, this technology is gaining new traction in hospitals as a tool to improve the patient experience. By assigning locator badges to both patients and staff, then combining location data with sophisticated software, hospitals can gain a powerful “traffic control” system, helping to monitor room and bed availability, detect bottlenecks, and improve overall patient flow. This emphasis on optimizing operations can lessen patient wait times and boarding in the Emergency Department and shorten overall lengths of stay.
On inpatient floors, one new use of RTLS technology helps nurses with their intentional rounding routines. The practice of rounding, or checking patients at least once per hour, was originally recommended by The Studer Group as a way to improve both patient satisfaction and safety. RTLS plays a role by monitoring when a nurse last entered a patient room, keeping a running timer, and cuing nurses when rounding is near due or overdue. By communicating each patient’s rounding status to the entire unit, nurses can take a team approach to care, helping their co-workers when they get waylaid with other pressing patient care duties, ensuring that rounding doesn’t fall through the cracks.
In the patient room itself, advanced entertainment systems not only take patients’ minds off their worries, they’re also communicating important information about their health. Systems that offer video games, Internet applications and on-demand movies can help patients through long hospital stays. As a nurse, the feature I like best is that these systems can also serve up educational information about their condition, including self-care and discharge instructions.
Providers can even order educational videos from the EMR and have them delivered direct to the patient’s TV to watch on-demand. This allows patients to watch instructions when they are most able to pay attention, which can improve the retention of important information, helping the patient feel more confident about going home and reducing readmissions. These patient engagement systems can even be integrated to RTLS and programmed to keep a log of who’s been in the room – a great feature for families so they can see who has been in to see the patient today. The on-screen read-out saves time for both family members trying to get answers and for clinical staff who may not remember who was in to see the patient.
Even long-standing hospital systems are getting technological upgrades. Nurse call systems now monitor how long it takes to answer patient calls, helping to document the high quality of care or provide objective data for process improvement. Overhead paging systems and pocket pagers are being replaced with smart phones – and they’re being integrated with patient monitoring devices to help reduce noise. Instead of an IV Pump beeping for attention until a nurse can attend to the issue (waking or annoying nearby patients), smart devices integrated with the nurse call systems send their alerts directly to the smart phone of the nurse responsible for that patient. The nurse can use his or her good judgement to defer the alert, escalate it, or answer it, all without frustration on the part of the patient, who otherwise may wonder if anyone will respond to the alarm.
Yet improving the patient experience doesn’t have to be tied to big systems — even smaller gadgets can have an impact. For example, devices that help nurses view the exact location of patient veins can help start IVs without multiple attempts and reduce the need for medically unnecessary PICCs.
As we move past EMR implementation, the role of technology in the patient care experience will be even more important than ever before. We must never forget that the most important part of this technology ensemble is the patient. If IT can help improve the quality of care and the patient experience, then it should be given high priority. If it also helps clinical staff, that adds even more value.
This begs the question, what new technologies are you implementing, and what is the impact to patient care?
About The Author
Kimberly Barnhardt, MBA/MHA, BS, RN, CPSO, is the Manager of Clinical Education at Clinical Inservices Solutions, a division of Versus Technology, Inc. Barnhardt combines her experience as a registered nurse with her expertise in clinical applications to guide clinical end users through the implementation of new medical technologies. With more than 20 years of nursing experience, she has led the successful deployment of medical technologies in hospitals nationwide through exceptional education solutions and workflow management efficiencies.
