Category Archives: Informatics

INTRODUCING RAULAND RESPONDER 5000 FOR SKILLED NURSING

RB-Responer5KLogo

NEW, EASY ‘NURSE CALL’ SOLUTION FOR SKILLED NURSING FACILITIES DELIVERS TECHNOLOGY FOR IMPROVED PRODUCTIVITY, SAFETY AND SATISFACTION

A new communications and productivity solution for skilled nursing facilities and nursing homes has been launched by Rauland, a division of AMETEK, Inc.

The Responder® 5000 advanced and proven ‘nurse call’ system helps facilities and staff keep patients comfortable and safe, while allowing administrators to balance economic priorities with an ability to deliver effective care in a competitive market.

Already a leader in the acute care market, Rauland has extended its capabilities to this under-served market with an elegant new technology platform. Once installed at a facility, Responder 5000 can help keep communications and information flowing efficiently, manage workflows and staff more effectively while improving staff retention, and make a positive impact on the life of residents and staff.

”Rauland is excited to offer a real solution for the nursing homes across North America,” said Jennifer Holden, Vice President-Healthcare Product Strategy. “These facilities haven’t been given the necessary attention over the years by manufacturers, and that needs to change. These facilities know all too well about doing more with less.”

The Responder 5000 platform is built on the latest and greatest technology and wraps it up in a quick-to-see, easy-to-digest software package that staff will love. The reporting package on this ranges from auto emails with whichever frequency the facility wants, to exception reporting on just those resident calls that went unanswered for too long.

ELEMENTS OF CARE
Elements of the Responder 5000 solution include audio bathroom stations, resident equipment stations, workflow stations and attractive, programmable corridor lights. The Responder 5000 mobile app easily downloads to smartphones, allowing staff to make the most effective use of their time, and be in communication with residents, while on the move for convenient response and clarification of needs.

The robust Responder 5000 software application allows facilities to modernize the workplace with an uncomplicated solution for communication needs, including activity boards, messaging app, detailed, simple reporting, and resident management. Seamless integrations with other systems are possible to deliver optimal value and reduce redundancies, including solutions for wander management

Greater staff satisfaction achieved with the new solution can mean lower turnover and improved continuity for residents. Reduced noise and reassured residents can translate to a more healing and a comfortable environment.

SUCCESSFUL INSTALLATION
At one of the initial Responder 5000 system installations at Southridge Healthcare in South Dakota, the system has helped track staff presence by role, and has delivered far more detailed information on the delivery of daily care. The 110-bed long-term and rehabilitative care facility has used the Responder 5000 for solutions in workflow, communication, safety and call response, Rauland said.

“We’ve lowered our average response time to 2 ½ minutes at this point,” said Bessie Hammer, RN/Administrator at Southridge Healthcare. “And, the reporting is much better than what we had previously. It’s much easier to format, and much easier to read.”

Responder 5000 reporting can display data and information as charts and graphs, and reports can be scheduled to be emailed at certain times for easy reference and tracking.

ENVIRONMENT OF CARE
In addition to productivity and satisfaction enhancements, the Responder 5000 solution can help nursing facilities guarantee compliance with Medicare VBP programs and improve their interdepartmental communications — including housekeeping, EVS, and transport.

Responder 5000 also can help enhance residents’ safety by visually identifying fall risks via multiple displays, 2-way communication from resident’s bed and toilet, and by delivering automatic rounding reminders. In addition, the system helps administrators identify over-burdened staff situations for rapid mitigation, and can reassure family members about a resident’s safety and security with continuous tracking of location.

LOCAL SERVICE, SUPPORT
Rauland said a core strength of the new technology is its ability to provide local partners within the community for nearby service, support and installation. These exceptional support services can help optimize the success of the Responder solution as it functions in each customer’s unique environment.

Each SD6 Member Company is excited to deliver the new Rauland Responder 5000 to Skilled Nursing Clients offering timely, onsite clinical design, implementation and application services and support, as well as extensive hands-on Responder training that is continually refreshed based on field experience and ongoing R&D enhancements.

Sphere 3

THE PATIENT EXPERIENCE, AN INTERVIEW WITH ROD CORN, SPHERE 3 CONSULTING

SD6  Members partner with a number of different Best of Breed products to design a solution that best fits our client’s needs.  This means that as their practice they prescribe systems and technologies suited best to serve the specific desires of their clients.

Sphere3 Aperum® is a product offered by all the SD6 members and has a strong ability to influence improvement for the hospitals Patient Experience domain scores.
The following interview is with Rod Corn, Vice President of Strategic Initiatives for Sphere3.

Rod, thanks for joining us today, could you take a moment to introduce your experience prior to joining Sphere3.

I joined Sphere3 full time in the fall.  I have worked in healthcare for over 37 years primarily in operations Olathe Medical Center.  By Operations I mean that I started with managing all of the ancillary departments such as building services, housekeeping, PT, etc and was promoted to the COO.  I took on everything from IT to Laboratory.  All while transitioning the hospital to a new location.

I wanted to try my hand at the technology world.  Had the opportunity to launch Sprint Healthcare System that supported application development and rollout for Local, Long Distance, and Wireless divisions.  We were early modelers of Telemedicine, Community Health Information Networks, and early patient satisfaction surveys. It was a great experience and a lot of fun doing something exciting.

Direct hospital work called my name so I returned as the COO of the Olathe Health System.  We developed one of the largest master planned healthcare vertically integrated healthcare campuses with over 350 acres that included everything from acute care to a retirement village.  I also managed all of the Health Information Management and negotiated the Cerner contract for meaningful use.   After 12 years I stepped down and did a few different roles with companies developing hospitals and health systems.

Tell me about Patient Experience.

Patient Experience is the cross section of quality and satisfaction.  It is the balance between doing pleasing the patient and serving their needs most appropriately.  Caring for patients is not an easy task – they are not generally happy about being at the hospital, they don’t feel well, and it can be a scary place.  There is a lot going on – sometimes it feels like decisions are made “about” them instead of “with” them.   So we as hospital administrators have to find a methodology to collect their feedback and apply their feedback – all while monitoring the workload they are generating and maintain high levels of safety.

Did you do Leadership Rounds when you worked as a Hospital Administrator?

Yes!  When I was at Olathe, I did leadership rounds on patients on a regular basis.  I would tell my secretary “Well I am going out to do my Forrest Gump box of chocolate rounds, because I never know what I am going to get.”  Which is the truth!  I would walk into a patient room with no understanding of their care, their behaviors, or previous feedback.  It was like walking in blind.  One of the things I appreciate most about the Aperum®  tool is that it gives you a full picture of their behaviors which we gather from Nurse Call Light activity, Bed data, RTLS and even Cardiac monitors.  Plus, it gives a really easy to see and understand visual of the notes associated with each round.

Additionally, when we would receive our patient satisfaction reports from Press Ganey or Healthstream or whoever had the contract at the time – it was several weeks old.   Aperum®  is a real paradigm shift in leadership and management as it is real time and can be applied at the point of care.   Plus, the information is linked to where they were discharged – so they may have been on 3 or 4 different units or rooms and we had to associate the feedback with the final location.

So, was that what attracted you to Sphere3?

Absolutely.  The role that Aperum®  plays in patient satisfaction – most importantly the caregiver satisfaction.  Caregiver Satisfaction is a direct correlation to Patient Satisfaction.  Nursing is the heart of the hospital and they have the most direct patient interaction of all.  Hospitals have a big challenge with recruiting and retaining quality staff and they don’t have a good way to manage their workload effectively.

After seeing Aperum®  – I knew that this application would give real insights for the leadership to understand the true workload.   It’s a game changer – I have worked in the emerging technology space before when I was at Sprint and introducing that into the marketplace is exciting.  I wish I would have had a tool like this when I was leading an organization.

So data is great but how do you make this all work? It seems like a big under taking for a hospital to take on one more “program”.

I agree, I have been in that spot myself during my tenure at Olathe.  We completely understand.  Part of the Sphere3 model is that we provide a team – which we call our Blue Pants Team – that partners with clinical leadership on a regular basis.  That team becomes an extension of the hospital meeting regularly with the staff to review their leadership rounding practices, and doing regular gap analysis.   The software is only part of the Sphere3 story – we really become a part of the hospital team as we work to integrate the data and patient feedback into the culture of the organization.

What about Nurse Call data?  What is the real value behind that from a hospital perspective?

Nurse Call data is a way to document the behaviors of the patient AND the abilities of the care team to manage their care.  It’s a real cornerstone of understanding.  EMR documents based on the observation of the care team but Aperum®  documents based one the actions, requests, and even cardiac alarms of the patient.

Often we hear hospitals talking about the need to know how long it’s taking them to respond to patients – a real service level perspective of the data.  What I find fascinating is that this data really gives a good picture of the patient’s behaviors and presents it in an easy to use mobile view.

So it’s important that the nurse call data is what we call “clean” and free of gaps.  It’s important that the manufacture treats it as important and not just information that can be used to troubleshoot their technology.  The value is in the understanding it provides us about patients.

Who has been the strongest nurse call partner to Sphere3?

We are at our core vendor neutral – we believe that data is data and our job is to find it, normalize it, and record it.  The hospital has to make the choice on what vendor serves their needs best and while we have our opinions based on our history in the consulting space, we are committed to partner to make any system work.

However, by far the Rauland Responder 5 nurse call system has been the strongest integration and best partner.  Rauland has over 60% of the acute care space across the US and their data is very solid.  We are pleased to have been able to partner with the SD6 nationwide to provide Aperum®  to their customers.

Thanks again for your time, is there anything you would like to close with?

We welcome the opportunity to talk to any hospital who would like to see improvement in the patient experience domain scores.  We recently completed an impact study with Centerpoint Medical Center and were able to garner great improvements and show a positive ROI.   Our techniques are proven to show improvement.   Please contact your local SD6 partner to get more information.

humannetwork

IMPROVE RESPONSE TIMES AND HCAHPS SCORES

How Hospitals can use RTLS technology to cut nursing response times & increase HCAHPS Scores:

Workflow in a hospital needs to be efficient in order to avoid chaos and increase quality of care. By implementing technology to cut nurse’s response times and reduce patient wait times will not only make a nurse’s day go more smoothly, it can dramatically boost a hospitals’ bottom line.

By integrating a Responder 5 nurse call system and a real time locator system (RTLS) using badges or smart phones (as badges) will allow hospitals to connect the “last mile” of patient integration. Meaning, we have connected most areas of the hospital around the EMR, like pharmacy, labs, etc., however, this is the final and the most important piece of that connection, because it affects how the patient and staff interact and communicate at the bedside.

When we can communicate and interact on this level, patient reviews reflect it in the HCAHPS scores, which in turn are a direct correlation to Medicare reimbursements, thus affecting a hospital’s bottom line. When this patient/staff interaction doesn’t work well or breaks down, wait times go up in the ER, potential patients leave without being seen and patient experience goes down from the ER to the acute care setting.

Real Time Locator Systems
Using RTLS for patient locating in the ER allows hospitals to have full visibility into what we call “time to vitals” – that being the amount of time between when the patient begins the process and receives a transponder/locator to when a caregiver enters the exam room and begins vitals. This process can be tracked automatically and used for staffing adjustments/trending/training programs.

Once the patient moves from one room to the next or is admitted to a unit, the RTLS can trigger a notification for environmental services that the room is now vacant and needs to be cleaned and prepped for the next patient. Environmental services can then notify the admissions office once the room is ready via the same system to enable the fastest turnaround, thus speeding a hospital’s ER throughput and “time to vitals.” In doing so, it gives hospitals the best chance of lower wait times and higher HCAHPS scores.

Real time location systems also allow the nurse on call to document staff presence in each room and automatically cancel nurse call lights to help clinicians on the go. Both RTLS and the R5 nurse call system can help speed things up by giving hospitals a real time look of where its critical assets are located for expedited deployment.

Nurse Call Systems
Nurse call systems are the lifeline of communication from the patient to the caregivers’ world. Until now, nurse call systems have always been an intercom like system that was hardwired to complete a set number of tasks, with technology advancing, there are new systems available, such as Rauland’s Responder 5, which is flexible and has a variety of ways to best automate clinical processes.

Integrating a nurse call system allows for real-time status monitoring of the bed exit alarm, head and foot rails, brakes, head-of-bed angle and weight, giving nurses and other caregivers the data they need to cut their response times. Nurse call systems also facilitate automated risk protocol monitoring to help minimize falls, pulmonary and skin complications.

Other Systems to Consider
Although nurse call and RTLS are the two main systems that will help cut nurses response times and patient wait times, implementing other systems, processes and integrations will also lead to a more efficient workflow, as well as increased HCAHPS scores, positively impacting hospitals’ bottom lines.

Integration software is the critical must-have feature. This allows for EMR integration, which is bi-directional digital data integration between nurse call, smart beds, EMR systems and wireless devices that produce a workflow that is more automated around the clinicians’ real workflow and allows them more efficiency at the bedside with their patient.

Implementing a wireless handset system for nurses will directly send nurse calls and bed events, like bed exit alarms, to caregivers ensuring they have a continuous pulse on patient needs. Another great time saver is allowing the patient to reach the right caregiver at the right time. For example, if a patient needs water, they can push the water button and the CNA is called to respond, not the RN, however if the pain button is pushed, the RN is notified and possibly the pharmacy, depending on the unit workflow.

Not only does this allow for reduced falls, location of staff to reduce time spent finding the right caregiver, accurate and time stamped documentation of staff time with patients, enhanced coordination between nursing and other departments like pharmacy, environmental services, case managers, etc., enhanced emergency department throughput and data transparency to enable enhanced workflow reporting, it also increases patient satisfaction and HACAHPS scores.

One of the most important processes that hospitals can put into place is reporting. By connecting this “last mile” hospitals are providing a transparency into gathering data that will allow them to provide their executive team with an accurate overview of workflow and also allow them to use reports that enable caregiver efficiency, provide answers to frequent questions and enhance the patient experience, in result impacting their bottom line.

About the Author
Edward Baird, Director of Sales, has more than 20 years of experience in the communication, clinical informatics, security and life-safety technology industry. Beacon Communications, LLC is an industry leader in providing full-service crucial communications and security systems to the healthcare, government municipality, education and commercial real estate markets throughout Colorado and many neighboring states.