Bon Secours Mercy Hospital introduced final week that it has entered right into a 10-year partnership with medical gadget maker Royal Philips that can standardize affected person monitoring programs in all 49 hospitals. The Cincinnati-based Catholic well being system believes that this technological improve will in the end scale back price burden and rework care supply.
In an interview, a Bon Secours nursing govt mentioned that the group’s hospitals had disparate monitoring programs, that means nurses and physicians need to cope with barely other ways of caring for sufferers relying on the placement.
“Beforehand 80% of our {hardware} know-how was Phillips. Aside from that, it was a distinct type of system and we have now centralized, decentralized, completely different sorts of processes and workflows,” mentioned Jodi Pahl, chief Nursing Officer for workforce expertise and nursing outcomes. “This may permit us to standardize that throughout all of our amenities.”
The monetary particulars of the partnership weren’t disclosed however it’s not a value-based contract.
If a affected person’s coronary heart rhythm is being monitored, beforehand nurses must manually transfer that cardiac information into the affected person’s medical document. As soon as the technological improve happens, the info will routinely combine with Epic and populate the affected person’s EMR.
“So even like a know-how like wave strip (cardiac rhythm monitoring) export — as an alternative of our nurses taking part in kindergarten the place they copy and paste, this can routinely go proper into Epic in order that the wave strips may be seen by physicians or nurses or anyone proper within the Epic-[configured] {hardware},” Pahl defined.
All this automated data technology proper within the EMR can solely imply one factor — decrease tech burden, which is able to result in decrease clinician burnout, which is able to in the end lead to higher affected person care. A nurse’s job of affected person monitoring is to not “monitor the displays and cope with the tools,” declared Julia Strandberg, chief enterprise chief, Linked Care at Philips. That is the place the Amsterdam-based firm’s know-how can have a profound impression on affected person care, she believes.
Strandberg identified that it’s not only a matter of connecting important indicators data from Philips {hardware} again into the EMR. However the data system powering Philips monitoring {hardware} may be despatched to clinicians in different components of the hospital too. Nurses would additionally be capable to get the identical data on their telephones.
“It’s additionally a pipe that connects that data to cell models, centralized monitoring models, dashboards that might exist within the departments such that the fitting individuals get the fitting data on the proper time with out doing any extra work,” she mentioned.
Pahl defined that the know-how additionally is ready to escalate an issue to another person ought to a nurse be busy with one other affected person throughout a time when one other affected person of their care wants quick assist.
“The nice a part of that is each nurse will carry a [smartphone] and the communication will go on to that gadget with the power to see the guts rhythm on the gadget. And there’s an escalation course of within the background. So if I’m taking good care of one other affected person and I can’t get to [the other patient], it’ll routinely escalate for us,” Pah mentioned. “And what’s nice with Phillips is simply the intelligence behind the pipes, let’s say, the place we will work out these nuisance alarms and actually make the most of the know-how in order that the nurse is getting the true alarms that she must be getting and in a well timed method proper to our cellphone.”
The primary three years of the partnership will go towards implementing the {hardware} and software program system throughout the 49 hospitals whereas the latter seven can be spent in upkeep, per the contract between Bon Secours and Philips. Though full implementation is three years away, the aid that Pahl feels is quick and palpable.
“You don’t perceive how lengthy we’ve been engaged on getting issues standardized [in terms of] {hardware} and software program, and this has been such a aid that we’re going to have the ability to say to our nurses, ‘this can show you how to effectivity clever,’” Pahl famous.
Photograph: metamorworks, Getty Photographs
