Strengthening Your Patient Progression Muscles: Is it Time for a Heavier Set of Weights?
By Brooke Breunig
At the beginning of the new year, I set out on a wellness journey like 45% of the country. A "New Year's Resolution" that included becoming a healthier, slimmer version of myself. I made a few large purchases to support my goal, including one of those fancy exercise bikes with virtual instructors cheering me on while I curse my inability to creep up on the leaderboard. Months later, I am still consistent in climbing on the bike a few times a week, and I have slowly gained strength and endurance.
A couple of weeks ago, I noticed the small dumbbells included with the fancy exercise bike no longer push me and are not heavy enough to help me gain upper body strength. I shopped around and found an amazing set of rainbow-colored dumbbells in various heavier weights that not only spruce up the look of my exercise environment but also allow me to focus on becoming stronger when I step off of my fancy exercise bike.
So what does a FEB (you know, Fancy Exercise Bike) have to do with patient progression and throughput?
Many hospitals across the country now manage and progress their patients using innovative, high-tech Electronic Medical Record systems (EMRs). These systems have enabled hospitals to streamline how medical care teams document information about their patients. From admission to discharge, EMRs allow hospitals to provide more consistent bedside care for their patients.
The EMR sounds a lot like my FEB! I know what to expect when I place my feet into the pedal straps and illuminate the instructor screen, just as care team providers know what to expect when they log in to document in the EMR. We both have great tools to help us meet our goals. However, the EMR may fall short when the hospital is ready to strengthen its patient progression muscles. Just like my FEB, an EMR only comes with a set of small accessories to get you started. After that, the hospital needs something more to continue to develop strong patient progression performance.
I achieved good flow in my exercise routine, but I stopped progressing. After meeting my initial goal of gaining strength and endurance, I moved on to a bigger goal of building muscles that my FEB alone wasn't designed to help me reach.
EMRs are similar when it comes to patient progression; hospitals might be good at moving patients throughout the system, but with an EMR alone, they just aren’t meeting their higher patient progression goals. In order to build stronger patient progression muscles, hospitals will have to step off of their FEBs and pick up heavier weights to supplement their EMRs.
The first weight you might grab represents your human systems; these are the processes that your organization follows in daily operations to move your patients throughout the hospital. It is probable you are unaware of some weaknesses that exist here; that all areas of your hospital function as islands of excellence, each focusing on providing patient care as they know how, with little understanding of their organizational impact on patient throughput.
Imagine how strong you could become with a central command center that coordinates and oversees the movement of all patients throughout your hospital.
Strategic roles must be in place to manage patient throughput, even as granular as the coordination of inpatient services; prioritizing patients needing procedures to progress their care and coordinating multiple patient procedures to eliminate white space. This will strengthen the organization to progress to your next level. It is all about gradual improvement, because let's face it, no one becomes a bodybuilder overnight.
The second weight you advance to on your patient progression journey provides technology to move your hospital from operating in silos to functioning as a whole with the support of the central command center that you've now put in place. This technology provides visibility to discharge goals for the entire care team and the ability to identify and escalate barriers to a safe and timely discharge.
The power to align nurses, case managers, providers, service area technicians, hospital executives, etc. on the plan for progressing each patient from admission to discharge may be something you think you have until you reach down to pick up this second weight. It is clearly heavier than your first set, but with each set of weights, you are slowly strengthening your patient-progression muscles.
Don't get me wrong, it would have been easier for me to stay on my FEB, lifting the small, inadequate dumbbells provided for me. Seeking out a set of heavier weights and deciding to put in the work of lifting them was hard. They are heavy, but I had reached a plateau in my wellness journey and my goals increased as I became stronger and gained endurance.
If you've hit a patient progression plateau with your EMR, where you can’t squeeze any more benefit out of doing the same thing, it is time to disrupt your routine and invest in a focused solution that will help you strengthen your patient progression muscles. It is time for a set of heavier weights!