When it comes to patient data, chances are your nurses are doing all the heavy lifting. Today’s nurse hustles from bed to bed, interacting with patients and devices, jotting down critical information on anything and everything. By mid-shift, this nurse’s pocket is full of paper scraps and antiseptic wipe packets. Penned on these materials is the data that belongs in your EMR.
Enter medical device integration (MDI), the unifier of the digital data generated by individual devices in a hospital. MDI, or device connectivity, automates the flow of data from medical devices directly to the EMR, resulting in improvements in productivity, safety, and access to data throughout the hospital.
For clinical staff, MDI drives workflow efficiencies. Take bedside patient monitors for example. Care providers typically acquire a patient’s vital signs from these devices, write them down a piece of paper, and then enter them into the EMR later in multiple-patient batches.
To assess this process, Texas-based Wise Regional Health System (WRHS) hired a third party consulting firm to document the amount of time their nurses spent charting patient data. The findings? Nurses were spending a staggering 25 percent of their time charting.
Now for some good news
After implementing an MDI solution, that number dropped to 15 percent at WRHS. This equates to one hour of “found time” per nurse per shift. As a result, nurses at WRHS report that they spend more time delivering direct patient care.
While MDI gets nurses back to the bedside, it also reduces errors. Manually transcribing data is inherently problematic. According to a Welch Allyn presentation delivered in January of 2009, 10 to 15 percent of all transcribed test results are errant. Problems like indecipherable handwriting, data entered in the wrong chart, and lost notes are all too common and, furthermore, understandable. Device connectivity reduces these risks greatly through seamless data transfers.
“The automation of data collection decreases data entry errors and improves the quality of the data documented,” says Clinical Analyst Mary Carr, R.N. “These factors ultimately improve patient safety.”
Device integration also results in more immediate access to patient information. At the aforementioned WRHS, it used to take 12 hours for device-generated patient data to make its way into the EMR. After implementing an MDI solution, that time was reduced to two hours. This enables doctors and caregivers to make decisions – from diagnoses to prescriptions – based on comprehensive, up-to-date EMRs.
These examples illustrate how MDI improves productivity, safety, and access to data. In addition to these clinical benefits, however, MDI also drives another significant improvement: the development of “meaningful” EMRs.
“Medical device integration enables healthcare providers to take a significant step forward in becoming ‘meaningful users’ of the EMR,” says Carr. “MDI helps hospitals reap the maximum possible stimulus reimbursements.”
In this way, MDI is directly connected to returns on your EMR investment. That’s why hospital boards committed to meeting the federal government’s requirements and the stimulus dollars that accompany them are paying attention to MDI.
Once committed to integration efforts, there’s still a lot to learn. Naturally, some hospitals are more successful than others. Among the success stories, one general but sizeable theme emerges: get the right people onboard and invested in the project from the beginning.
“Maturing the EHR is ingrained in our culture,” says Emma Brandon, R.N. and Cooper Health Systems Director of Clinical Information Systems. “It’s a corporate-level project with visibility that extends to the board and beyond.”
Dave Dyell is CEO of iSirona, a provider of simplified solutions for medical device connectivity.
