Wouldn’t it be nice if care providers had a crystal ball?
They would know in advance to keep their patients in the ICU a little longer or not send them home quite yet. Mission Health has implemented a clinical surveillance tool that constantly monitors a patient’s information and provides a full visual representation of the patient’s condition that provides them their version of a crystal ball. By observing patient trends (either declining or improving), clinicians can be alerted to at-risk patients earlier, and vice versa, can know when a patient is ready for transfer or discharge.
Specifically, Mission Health has been able to leverage the tool to make processes more efficient by utilizing the graphs throughout the patient’s stay to help support critical thinking skills and guide clinical decisions.
Below are a few key areas that Mission has identified as game changers:
- Improved Nursing Documentation – Ensuring accurate and timely documentation of vitals and patient assessments is key to painting the full picture of a patient’s condition. Mission Health set a protocol for nursing assessments to be completed on all admissions and regional transfers to allow the Rothman Index to be generated. By entering information in a timely manner, it allows the real-time information of a patient surveillance tool to be accurate and actionable.
- Discharge Planning – Mission Health implemented a protocol which requires the review of PeraTrend graphs for patients prior to their discharge. This allows clinicians to ensure the patient’s condition is trending upward rather than downward – which could be a potential readmission red flag.
- Bed Management – By having a visual representation of a patient’s condition, clinicians can improve bed management. By reviewing a patient’s PeraTrend graph when a transfer request is put in, clinicians can use that information to help guide their decisions. If a transfer request is put in to move an ICU patient to a lower level of care, but their trend is declining or not improving, they could potentially keep that patient in the ICU in order to keep the patient at the level of care they need at that time.
Last week, Carrie Edgison and Mary Jane Cline from Mission Health presented Supporting Transitions of Care. Listen to Mission Health’s presentation to understand how successfully implementing the Rothman Index has supported transitions of care across their entire healthcare organization.