Grace Hospital is committed to providing the best clinical care to patients with complicated health conditions. It looked to enhance its clinicians’ ability to focus on direct patient care while reducing alarm fatigue and increasing protection of patients’ personal health information. The hospital also wanted to improve the communications between its four locations to increase efficiencies and centralize functions.
Solution
Today HipLink® presented by AT&T mobilizes a new bedside monitoring system from Fukuda Denshi, allowing clinicians to quickly respond to critical alerts they receive on their smartphones. Security for these devices is enhanced through AirWatch from AT&T, a mobile-device management solution. “The ability to integrate with other systems to provide a seamless solution creates a demanding design challenge. HipLink’s unique patented technology was developed to address these complex requirements,” said Pamela LaPine, CEO of HipLink.
Treating the Complex
Grace Hospital provides many sophisticated services including ventilator weaning, pulmonary rehabilitation, organ transplant, rehabilitation, and wound care. “We take care of the most medically complex patients,” said Raj Khanna, CEO of Grace Hospital. “By focusing on these patients, we have become undisputed experts in providing complicated treatments. We help ensure that our nurses and other clinicians have the opportunity to provide the bedside care that is needed.”
Facing Challenges
Clinicians must spend as much time as possible at the patients’ bedsides, fully immersed in providing the care that they require. This is challenging given labor shortages and alarm fatigue. Alarm fatigue occurs when clinicians become desensitized to the barrage of alerts and warnings emanating from patient monitoring devices. It is a challenge to respond to every beep, especially if there is not a way to assess the urgency alarms.
Grace set up a central monitoring station, or “war room,” which was staffed around the clock by up to five full-time clinical professionals to analyze the alarms and dispatch clinicians. Grace was open to an alternative to this expensive proposition.
Mobilizing Critical Alerts
AT&T consultants recommended using HipLink presented by AT&T, a highly secure messaging platform that is configured to automatically send bedside monitor alarms directly to clinicians’ mobile devices. With this system in place, Grace was able to eliminate the need to staff the war room and reassign those nurses to direct patient care. This solution has resulted in significant cost savings for Grace Hospital. “When an alarm goes off, HipLink immediately sends a message to the nurses’ smartphones,” said Khanna. “They get the messages in real time and can respond directly to the patient’s needs without waiting for anyone from the war room.”
Battling Alarm Fatigue
Now, because alarms are routed directly to nurses’ phones, there is no need to constantly listen for and respond to every beep and ring. Nurses know that the highest priority red-alert alarms go to the phones. From their smartphones, nurses can directly view crucial information such as EKGs, patient oxygen levels, and apnea readings. This information lets them quickly determine whether a patient is in distress and requires immediate attention. “HipLink presented by AT&T has helped tremendously with patient safety,” added Khanna. “Our nurses are getting alarms and are able to respond in a timely manner.”
Keeping the Focus on the Patient
Creating an environment that met the communication needs of Grace Hospital was complex. HipLink was able to provide Grace a variety of cost-effective solutions, ultimately creating a platform that meets these challenges head-on. With the new solutions in place, hospital caregivers can focus their attention on the most important task at hand: successfully treating medically complex patients. Because Grace clinicians and staff are dispersed around the Cleveland area, they need to securely share information between locations. HipLink helped unify the organization, realizing administrative and operational efficiencies.