Nurse leaders are the front-line users who actively implement and utilize new healthcare tools; it is critical that these tools are designed and developed with the needs of those nurse users in mind, providing ease-of-use and automating inefficient process to reduce delays associated with time-consuming administrative tasks.
In many hospitals, modern healthcare delivery is plagued by archaic, pen-and-paper processes that inherently cause down-time and are prone to delays. From EHRs to throughput tools like BedWatch, healthcare technology tools are becoming increasingly available to address a wide variety of issues affecting healthcare delivery.
Hospital leaders are taking notice. According to an article published in Modern Healthcare on November 1 titled, Nurse CIOs are Taking on Bigger Roles in Healthcare, author Bob Herman explains that approximately 30% of U.S. hospitals and health systems now employ a Chief Nursing Informatics Officer (CNIO) to help identify, assess, and implement new technology tools.
“Nurses are the biggest users of the EHR and are responsible for a large portion of the documentation that addresses quality measures, safety measures and the overall clinical picture of the patient,” says Patricia Sengstack, president of the American Nursing Informatics Association and CNIO at Bon Secours Health System.
These nurse leaders face challenges in achieving success with many of these tools, however. Lack of standardization, or interoperability, poses a major obstacle to driving process improvement on a hospital-wide scale.
Nurses will play a pivotal role in bridging communication gaps between patients and technology, and in using the volumes of patient data to drive meaningful improvement in patient care and department operation protocols. “The focus had really been on how systems work and getting data in,” Sengstack says. But that’s shifted “toward getting data out.”
“The whole goal of informatics is to improve outcomes,” says Trish Trangenstein, a nursing informatics professor at Vanderbilt University’s School of Nursing.
The BedWatch suite of patient throughput tools, Admit Control, Bed Control, and Transport Control, simplify and streamline data collection processes and can be bolted on to other technology tools for maximum interoperability. BedWatch tools provide real-time visibility and hospital-wide transparency, as well as intuitive, dynamic dashboards and comprehensive, built-in reports to make it easy to dissect and disseminate performance data for objective process assessment and improvement.
The goal of successful healthcare IT should be to eliminate unnecessary inefficiencies and streamline processes in order to facilitate clear, complete communication among all players in the care delivery process. To learn how BedWatch can help you take control of patient throughput at your hospital or system, please contact us.
