Category Archives for Healthcare Innovation
Hospital Medicine: Flexible Schedule for Better Patient Care
Source: HealthLeadersMedia.com
By having hospitalists admit a disproportionate number of patients at the start of their work week, they can then taper off admissions in their last 2 days and prevent patients from transitioning among more providers than is necessary.
Want to improve satisfaction ratings among hospitalized patients? Try this: limit the number of hospitalists that a patient sees on any given day.
Rather than considering hospitalists as interchangeable cogs in the healthcare system, this approach allows the hospitalist to establish a relationship with the patient.
“What percentage of patients at your hospital see only one daytime hospitalist?” asked John Nelson, MD, a consultant at Nelson Flores Hospital Medicine Consultants, medical director at the Overlake Hospital Medicine Center in Bellevue, Wash., and co-founder of the Society of Hospital Medicine. Nelson spoke at a Hospital Medicine conference here.
Hospitalists variable schedules often force patients to transition between more providers than is necessary, he said. Having hospitalists work as many consecutive day shifts as possible is one way to avoid multiple hand-offs. Yet, even hospitalists working 7 days on and 7 days off shifts will admit new patients on their last day.
What if hospitals could avoid this dilemma? “What if you could exempt doctors on their last day from taking on the care of any new patients?” Nelson asked.
By having hospitalists admit a disproportionate number of patients at the start of their work week, they can then taper off their admissions in their last 2 days. So, that at noon on the second from last day of their work that provider will stop taking any new patients, he said.
Nelson’s colleague, Eric Howell, MD, immediate past president of the Society for Hospital Medicine, refers to this pattern of front-loading patient assignment as “slam and dwindle.”
“We hand off about six patients, usually because we’ve been able to whittle our list down,” Nelson said. Using this method of assignment, roughly 71% of patients will see the same daytime provider throughout their stay, he said.
In addition to better continuity of care, the incoming provider will pick up a lighter load of patients because on the last day of the outgoing provider’s shift, he or she will have more time to “tee up” patients, writing appropriate off-service notes, talking to families and doing the discharge work for individuals expected to leave the following day.
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5 Tips on surgical attire — what to wear in, or around the operating room
Source: Becker’s Hospital Review
AORN’s New Surgical Attire Recommended Practices: Five Points to Know
The Association of Perioperative Registered Nurses has released an updated version of recommended practices for surgical attire, providing guidance on what to wear in or around an operating room. An article from the AORN Journal detailed some of the practices outlined below:
- New guidelines cite evidence on the use of antimicrobial fabrics and say using fabric with that technology in scrubs could help protect patients from surgical site infections.
- Jewelry like earrings, watches and rings that cannot be confined in scrubs should not be worn in semi-restricted or restricted areas, as those items can increase bacterial counts on the skin
- Personal items like briefcases, backpacks and electronic devices should be kept off the floor and cleaned with a disinfectant before and after being brought into a perioperative setting
- Cover apparel like lab coats that are worn over scrubs should be single-use or, if reusable, should be cleaned in a health care-accredited facility after each use
- Any apparel worn in a perioperative setting should be cleaned in a health care-accredited laundry facility, as evidence suggests scrubs cleaned in a home setting have a risk for carrying pathogenic organisms.
…Story Continued On Original Site
Looking for ways to make your Risk/Quality Management job easier?
How would you like your hospital to have a ‘Culture of Quality’?
Save up to 30% on your RM/QI & PI programs.
Alarm Fatigue — Do You Have It?
I know you can relate to this situation. You’re walking through a parking lot when suddenly a car alarm starts going off and doesn’t stop, and (I’m willing to bet), you keep on walking without looking back. Sound familiar?
When car alarms first emerged back in the 80s they were few and far between. The ear splitting sounds of the alarms turned heads of onlookers, to what could be a serious situation in need of attention. It didn’t take too long, however, for us all to become desensitized to the familiar warbles and chirps, and we no longer paid any attention to them — defeating their purpose.
The same desensitization, or fatigue, happens with clinical alarms in hospitals. But, there are ways to help reduce alarm fatigue according to a study published in Pediatrics.
In the study researchers at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, led by Christopher Dandoy, M.D., of the hospital’s Cancer and Blood Diseases Institute, found that a standardized, team-based approach could dramatically reduce alarm fatigue — helping to eliminate the possibility of not responding to a true event.
The researchers created a standardized cardiac monitor care procedure for the hospital’s 24-bed pediatric bone marrow transplant unit.
As part of the project, Dandoy and his team developed a process for ordering monitor parameters according to age-appropriate standards, pain-free daily electrode replacement, personalized daily cardiac monitor parameter assessment and a reliable way of appropriately discontinuing monitors. Under these protocols, the median number of daily cardiac alarms fell from 180 to 40, while caregiver compliance increased from 38 percent to 95 percent.
“Cardiac monitors constitute the majority of alarms throughout the hospital,” Dandoy said in a hospital announcement. “We think our approach to reducing monitor alarms can serve as a model for other hospitals throughout the country.”
Fewer false alarms, he added, will allow hospital staff to devote more attention to significant alarms. Although the process was enacted in a pediatric unit, Dandoy and his team said it was applicable to “most units with cardiac monitor care.”
“Hospitals are greatly concerned about alarm fatigue because it interferes with patient safety, and it exposes patients–and the hospitals themselves–to grave harm,” said Michael Wong, executive director of the Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety, who presented findings at the Society for Technology in Anesthesia, earlier this year that hospital staff are exposed to an average of 350 alarms per bed, per day based on a sample from an intensive care unit at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center says nationwide adoption could increase patient safety
You can read the full study here.
Wikipedia tracking helps with disease prediction
Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico say that tracking Wikipedia page views can forecast the spread of influenza and dengue fever.
The researchers claim their algorithm allows them to overcome the challenges that hamper the reliability of other similar data surveillance methods based on Internet information.
Google Flu Trends, is a web service operated by Google, which provides estimates of influenza activity by aggregating Google search queries. But, early last year it was reported that they drastically overestimated peak flu levels, casting some doubt on the search giant’s ability to predict flu trends.
“Using simple statistical techniques, our proof-of-concept experiments suggest that these data are effective for predicting the present, as well as forecasting up to the 28-day limit of our tests,” the Los Alamos researchers say. “Our results also suggest that these models can be used even in places with no official data upon which to build models.
Though there are still detractors to the notion of using such systems to predict disease outbreaks, it is no doubt amazing to witness the many uses to which the growing volumes of meta data available on the internet will be used.
Read the full report here.
Don’t worry. Be happy… and improve patient safety/medical care.
Hospital Enacts New Mandatory Happy Hour for Employees
“Go figure out the best way to improve patient safety and medical care at our hospital.” was what CEO of Memorial Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, Dr. Gina Stockdale, posed to her panel members. A junior panel member in the back of the room raised his hand and said, “How about a happy hour for employees?”
It may seem ridiculous that down-time and socializing outside the hospital could have measurable positive effects on patient care and performance inside (it certainly did seem silly to some on the panel, as laughter initially followed the suggestion). But, research is showing that socializing and communication can be extremely beneficial to workplace performance. For Memorial Hospital, who as of August 1st has instilled a mandatory 30-minute happy hour session for employees, close collaboration and communication between healthcare staff and teams have already improved, and with it — patient care.
“Numerous studies show that communication between colleagues improves performance and patient outcomes,” said Janet Wilkerson, a patient safety analyst. “It only makes sense to create an atmosphere that promotes interaction and discussion in the hospital. I can’t think of a better way to do that than a happy hour.”
Though their methods are controversial, and we would never endorse mixing alcohol and medical care, Memorial Hospital has made a connection to a theme that we at Prista would like to continue talking about, “Happier staff makes for better care.”
Increasing communication and reducing the stress of managing Risk, Quality and Performance initiatives can and will improve workplace satisfaction and patient care. These key areas (Risk, Quality, Performance and team communication) are at the heart of the ActionCue Clinical Intelligence application.
To read the full article click here: http://www.gomerblog.com/2014/08/happy-hour/
For more information on how the ActionCue hospital risk management software can make you happier or to schedule a demo visit pristacorp.com.