Providers Working Proactively To Improve Patient Care

By Greg Bengel, contributing writer

One healthcare provider talks about how her organization strengthens their procedures and thus their patient outcomes by communicating more openly with patients and families

Recently, Transformative Health interviewed Hella Ewing, VP and CNO, All Children’s Hospital (ACH), on improving processes to provide better healthcare. According to Ewing, the secret to improving healthcare is connecting more intimately with both patients and their families. “As CNO, the team and I are always looking for opportunities to better connect with our patients and families and incorporate their input into our plan of care,” she tells Transformative Health. “This is essential in improving patient outcomes and enhancing the patient experience.”

Her advice is timely. As recently reported by Health IT Outcomes, the Future Physicians of America survey shows that patient-centered care is very popular among medical students, as 72 percent say they are likely to practice patient-centered care in their medical careers.

For Ewing, the main focus is family, which she says is “the center of everything.” She explains that ACH utilized its Family Advisory Council to film their daily interdisciplinary rounds, which physicians, patients, and family alike all participate in. They then uploaded the video to their Interactive Patient Care (IPC) system “to help educate new patients and show them what true patient engagement looks like.” It has paid off. Since uploading the video, ACH’s family satisfaction with the interdisciplinary rounds rose to above 80 percent.

ACH also push to include family by improving their shift-to-shift handoffs. “Nursing has one tab in the EMR that standardizes the handoff processes utilizing SBAR (Situation, Background, Assessment and Recommendation). This time allows the family to ask questions and establishes daily goals,” Ewing explains. ACH also uses iPads to provide interactive education with patient families.

Ewing also talks about how “providing depth and breadth to [their] family and staff education” helped to improve length of stay and reduce readmissions rates among asthma patients. Again, the process is all about connecting with the families. “Each patient and family has unique educational needs, and the team developed numerous IPC modules to meet them. Some patients would need to watch the entire series (about 45 minutes) and others would only need to view a couple of modules,” she says. Also improving the process was the utilization of clinical nurse leaders (CNL). A CNL, according to Ewing, “follows the patient anywhere he or she goes – ICU, floor, etc. – for continuity of care.”

Technology, of course, is vital to these processes, and ACH integrated their IPC technology directly into EMRs.

The processes that ACH improved for asthma patients through increased communication with patients and families can be directly utilized for other illnesses. Ewing explains, “Once we formalized our processes for asthma, we started using them for other chronic illnesses such as diabetes, obesity, sickle cell and cystic fibrosis. We can apply the same processes to improve outcomes.”

You can read the full interview with Ewing here.