The Top 3 Methods to Convey Real-Time Health System Information to Your Team
By Steve Smith
Many hospitals and health systems today are pursuing a vision of becoming a data-driven Real-Time Health System (RTHS), but the path to get there isn’t always easy… especially if your team isn’t on board. Have you heard objections like this from your team?
“I like that this tool offers me access to important RTHS data. It provides great data points, but I just don’t have time to log in and use it.”
Or, “I’m not at my desk and I just want the highlights of what I need to know when I need to know it.”
I’d like to provide some options for dealing with each of these potential objections. If you take into consideration the appropriate data viewing modalities for each user when designing workflow, you will see an improvement in the appropriateness and timeliness of actions taken from your RTHS data.
Let’s look closer at each of the objections.
“I’m at my desk all day doing real work in the command center, I don’t have time to go to another screen to see my RTHS Data.”
If you’ve managed or observed workflow in a health system or hospital command center, you understand the vast amount of information needed by command center staff to make patient placement, staffing, scheduling, or other logistical decisions. Command center staff are experts in their specialties. They know how to comb through multiple systems to get the information they need to make appropriate decisions.
They often are already utilizing 2-3 monitors with 4-8 applications open at one time. With that staggering array of information in front of them, the prospect of having to log in and open yet one more application and click through it to find RTHS data can be onerous.
They’re often looking for summary-level, actionable information, i.e. which patient(s) are waiting for admission longer than a specified time, or how many beds are available for monitored patients. We’ve found that this type of information is best presented via a large display monitor. Having a large wall-mount display that users can look at to immediately understand their current situation and any actions that need to be taken is instrumental in providing these command center users the actionable information they need without disrupting their complex workflow.
“I’m in meetings all day. I need to know what I need to know when I need to know it.”
I was at a customer site doing some training and had the opportunity to demonstrate a new real-time dashboard with the hospital system CFO. I was very excited about this dashboard because it pointed out that patients were unnecessarily holding in the hospital’s ED even though there were plenty of beds available for them.
During the demo, I asked her if she’d like to see the current situation in her hospital’s ED. She said “Yes”. We pulled it up on the screen and saw that there currently were multiple patients holding in the ED who could have been placed in a bed. She abruptly picked up her cell phone and walked out of the room. She walked back into the room ten minutes later, and within about five more minutes, those patients started moving out of the ED.
I set up a follow-up meeting with the CFO a few weeks later to make sure she was still finding the dashboard useful. She told me that she “hadn’t had a chance” to look at it since I left. I was mystified. How could that happen when she clearly saw the value of the dashboard during our last meeting?
She asked if it were possible for us to just push a notification to her when she had a situation she needed to attend to. This was really hard for me, a person with a data-driven operations background, to come to terms with. As I reflected on the scenario, I realized that the executive user can have a unique workflow that requires an entirely different way to access information. For people in this situation, RTHS information can be delivered via mobile products with notifications built into the workflow so that our busy executive users get what they need when they need it.
“I can’t be bothered to look at my phone or tablet when I’m rounding, I need the latest info on paper to take with me.”
Healthcare has been trying to get rid of paper for decades. I keep trying to get my wife to use my Google Calendar too, but some things are just not going to happen and we need to accept it. I must admit, nothing “boots up” faster than a piece of paper.
As much as I use Trello, Google Calendar, and other electronic “to-do” systems, I still have a small pad of paper with my shortlist of to-do items that I can’t part with. The same is true of many hospital care team members who are on the go most of the day.
Having a to-do list, patient census, etc., that can be updated with a pen or pencil can be invaluable. Yes, it seems counterintuitive since it is out of date as soon as it’s printed, but printed reports can still be a great tool for those who have a daily workflow that relies on information that either does not change rapidly or is highly user-centric. In these cases, updates can be made by pen more quickly than printing a new report.
The ability to create reports that can be printed on-demand, pushed out via email, or dropped onto a shared drive at scheduled times is yet another way that users can use real-time, actionable data without adding steps to their typical workflow.
In summary, the best, most actionable data available adds value only when the user has access to that data within the workflow of their typical day. Matching the proper modality with the proper user and workflow is the key to success with RTHS data.
When implementing new processes and views to RTHS data, validate with your users and your vendor that there will be readily available access to the data within your user’s standard workflow. Asking users to “add another click” to their day will only serve to constrain the success of your initiatives.