How Moving to a Digitally Streamlined Workflow Helps Improve Care

VITAS recently moved its clinical visits, in addition to admissions, to the ServiceNow scheduling package so that nurses can use iPhones instead of computers when seeing patients. That platform, consisting of templates and custom applications, is integrated with Microsoft Teams and other cloud-based tools to enhance clinical collaboration.

“The more automated you get, the faster the need for always-on IT is in the actual day-to-day workflow of our clinicians,” Hale said.

ServiceNow helps VITAS prioritize care and better meet patients ’real-time needs. For example, it can flag a change in status for a patient so that the caregiver can address those with greatest needs.

“They already have new immediacy and immediacy of data available,” Hale said. “Instead of worrying about the 47 visits that will take place that day, they can focus on the top 10.”

Ultimately, he envisions expanding the concept of just-in-time delivery to an “Uber for home care” model. If a patient has a need, a nearby nurse can respond with an automatic alert. “When that happens, the nurse’s schedule is automatically changed to show, for example, that the appointment she has at 2:00 needs to be postponed,” Hale said.

“When you have an ecosystem of clinical resources that are online and available, and have geolocated them, you can make brilliant decisions that can help you raise the immediacy of your care while reducing costs and improving. of quality, “he said.

LEARN MORE: Learn how Intel and ServiceNow combined to create a great remote solution.

Automation Makes Business Process Management More Efficient

In Central Florida, the biggest challenge for Ocala -based Marion County Hospice is communication. It has 400 employees, half of whom use laptops on patient visits. Rural Ocala, however, does not have the level of connectivity, such as extensive LTE and fiber lines, available in cities.

“We are the horse capital of the world,” said IT Director Darrell Poteet. “We have more horses here than people. None of us have good communication. But we have a huge outbound staff, and they need to communicate all the time. We do end-of-life care for our patients, and families want to get their clinical support people. ”

One of Poteet’s first projects after starting at Marion County Hospice in 2010 was to use Quest’s KACE Systems Management Appliance (formerly called the KACE K1000) to automate business processes such as onboarding.

“KACE took something that could be a bit complicated in the organization and allowed us to script it,” says Poteet, explaining that previously they had to combine spreadsheets and Microsoft Word documents to track the process, but often with spaces. “We’re going to miss giving someone something they need to do their job. There’s no way to really manage it in the middle of the company so we can make sure we don’t have things missing.”

RELATED: Learn how ServiceNow supports healthcare automation.

A few years later, Marion County Hospice added the KACE Desktop Authority for printer management and other tasks. The organization has four campuses, and its clinicians work from a variety of locations. Connecting them to the right printer is a challenge. Desktop Authority automates the staff matching process with printers based on where they are logged on to the network.

Over the years, the organization has used those two KACE products to add new features, such as reimaging laptops and desktop computers.

“We go through a lot of laptops. They fall, they fall on the roof of the car, the milk is thrown at them, “Poteet said.” But the nurses in the field work with the patients; they need what they need, and we need to get that back to them quickly. ”

With KACE, Poteet’s IT staff can automatically image a computer, copying a worker’s data, applications, setups, desktop and icons to the new device.

“Usually, by the time they get to the office, we get that system,” Poteet said. “Previously, we could take two days to prepare a laptop.”

Poteet recognizes such automated workflows for the organization’s success in dealing with the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, such as sending up to 40 percent of the office-based workforce using notebook computers. “We would never have survived if we didn’t have those functions yet,” he said.

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