Learn how HCA Healthcare, Continental Division put patients’ most valuable data directly at their physicians’ fingertips to save valuable time and improve care delivery.
Objectives
Even before COVID-19 pushed organizations into remote work and patients to embrace telehealth, HCA Continental felt the effects of healthcare going mobile. Primary care providers remained a vital part of the care continuum, but they no longer made as many hospital rounds. With an increasingly dispersed workforce, HCA Continental realized they needed a new way for medical and administrative staff to keep eachother in the loop, access patient information, and securely communicate with each other.
“With the evolution of mobility and changes in healthcare delivery, our primary care base was less likely to come to the hospital, and many of our consultants were providing care in a variety of places,” said Dr. Mark Raudler, chief medical information officer at HCA Continental. “Leveraging mobility — not just to look up information, but also to drive workflow and patient flow rapidly — became imperative to our success. It’s a mobile world and we’re increasingly focused on leveraging that mobile world to really drive patient care for a workforce not necessarily within the four walls.”
Actions
According to Andy Draper, chief information officer at HCA Continental, “The old model of a primary care provider following the patient in the hospital is gone.” The health system knew the easiest way for physicians to remain close to their patients was through a mobile platform like the Commure Care app, which enabled timelier sharing of patient data.
The Commure Care mobile app met a wish list of must-have capabilities that HCA Continental Division needed to give providers the real-time access to patient data required to assess and coordinate care:
• The ability to read labs, prescriptions, notes, and treatments
• Full radiology image review
• Secure provider text messaging with links to the complete patient record
• Integrated access to on-call schedules
HCA Continental operates both desktop and mobile versions of Commure Care, which integrates easily in a private cloud with its inpatient electronic health records system, MEDITECH®, so clinicians need only download the Commure Care application onto a device to get started. From there, they can securely access patient information and make informed care and diagnostic decisions regardless of their physical location (or their phone’s data plan).
Outcomes
Faster access to patient data and care decisions
When a patient with a serious hand injury enters HealthONE’s Rose Medical Center emergency department in Denver, Mark Radlauer, MD, no longer runs between rooms or devices to access electronic patient records, place orders, or review medical images. Nor does he need someone to help him track down a specialist and loop in the patient’s primary care provider.
All he needs is to open the Commure Care mobile app on his smartphone. What once took up to an hour is now handled in minutes, saving time while improving patient and provider experiences.
Streamlined clinical collaboration and decision-making when it matters most
Clinical solutions like Commure Care save time — one of a provider’s most precious resources — by driving more fluid clinical workflows and allowing for better clinical collaboration and quicker decision-making when it most matters.
“At the end of the day, most surgeons and other physicians are not going to go into the operating room without looking at images of the patient’s hip or cranial bleed or abdominal CAT scan,” Dr. Radlauer said. “They’re going to look at all that information before making a treatment decision. In those cases, we’ve had very broad adoption of Commure Care because it’s enabled providers to do things much easier.”
Better experiences for all
“Without technologies like this, it’s very difficult to keep those primary care providers in the loop and, frankly, learn from them,” Dr. Radlauer added. “They understand their patients better than anyone in the hospital. You need to adapt to mobile providers and clinical communications and workflows now driving patient care, or you won’t stay relevant in the new world.”
Not only do patients appreciate the resulting care experience, Draper noted — payors do, too. “I think there’s a window here in the next few years where hospitals that are aggressive with technology and bringing together disparate physicians around the patient will make a difference in quality scores and payer contracts,” he said. “And those that adopt technology like this will be stronger than those who don’t.”
Originally published by HIMSS.
