Healthcare organizations are constantly seeking ways to improve patient care and operational efficiency. Two key technologies that can help achieve these goals are patient flow solutions and electronic health records (EHRs). Integrating these systems can maximize their value. It also enables smoother patient transitions across care settings. This article explores the benefits of integration and provides recommendations for implementation.
Overview of Patient Flow Solutions
Patient flow solutions are software applications. They orchestrate and optimize patient movement through healthcare facilities. These systems provide broad visibility into the interdependent clinical, operational, and logistical processes. They impact patient flow at each point, from arrival to discharge.
Patient flow solutions provide core capabilities. These include bed management with visual dashboards showing bed status, occupancy projections based on historical trends, and cleaning alerts. Capacity planning tools ease volume forecasting. They also help with infrastructure gap analysis. This removes obstacles that inhibit patient throughput. Wait time tracking furnishes queue management and alert triggering. It prevents ER, OR, diagnostics, and other service settings delays. Workflow enhancement features embed order sets, protocols, and customized treatment flows. They speed up patient transitions and compress care provider response times. Finally, robust reporting on operational KPIs takes advantage of embedded advanced analytics. For example, it tracks the average length of stay. It also tracks discharge processing times and turnover rates.
Leading vendors offering enterprise-scale patient flow solutions include early pioneers TeleTracking and GE Healthcare. Major health IT leaders Cerner and Epic also boast comprehensive patient flow modules. Specialized best-in-breed vendors such as Tahoe, NextGen, and Allscripts also have offerings. Facilities can select standalone patient flow software solutions. They can also choose integrated modules within broader EHR environments. A comprehensive needs assessment before vendor selection is recommended.
Benefits of an EHR
An EHR is a digital version of a patient’s chart. It provides real-time access to medical and treatment history. EHRs are a core component of health information technology. They allow providers to manage patient care better. This is through data sharing and improved work processes. EHRs are a foundation of connected health information technology, conferring many benefits:
Improved Care Quality and Patient Safety
Widespread adoption of EHRs has demonstrably enhanced the quality of care and patient safety outcomes. EHRs allow care teams to execute medication management best practices, evidence-based care protocols, clinical decision support, and critically important test result follow-up. EHR analysis also helps administrators identify opportunities for quality improvement.
Complete Patient Information
EHRs bring together whole-person health data in one place. All caregivers across many care sites can access it. This comprehensive record mitigates the risks of fragmented information leading to errors. Complete records also reduce duplicative testing.
Enhanced Chronic Disease Management
EHR data within EHRs facilitates better preventative care and chronic disease management. It tracks health metrics, personalized treatment plans, prompts, and alerts. It also connects to patient portals. Patients also take part more in their health journey.
Administrative Efficiencies
EHRs yield significant productivity improvements and cost savings for medical practices and hospitals. Benefits emerge from reduced paperwork, automated workflows, integrated order entry, secure communications, and analytics for organizational decision-making.
The Value of Integrating Patient Flow Solutions with EHRs
Integrating patient flow solutions with EHRs can strengthen hospital operations in the following ways:
- Enhanced visibility into patient cases across venues of care. Patient movement milestones documented in the patient flow system can autopopulate the EHR to cut duplicate data entry.
- Streamlined admissions, discharges, and transfers. Patient movement milestones documented in the patient flow system can auto-populate the EHR to eliminate duplicate data entry.
- Improved bed utilization and patient logistics. The patient flow system leverages up-to-date EHR data to optimize bed assignments and care logistics.
- Better-informed staffing plans and schedules. Staffing algorithms can incorporate EHR data on patient volumes, understanding, and turnover rates to optimize nurse and physician schedules.
- Advanced analytics spanning clinical and operational data. Integrated reporting provides a comprehensive view of organizational performance. It correlates clinical indicators with operational metrics. For example, patient wait times and length of stay.
Implementation Considerations
Successfully integrating patient flow systems with EHRs requires careful planning across multiple dimensions:
Assemble an Integration Task Force
A cross-functional team should steer the integration effort. This includes representatives from IT, clinical leadership (nursing, providers), hospital operations, quality, finance, and end-user groups. Outside consultants can provide helpful guidance. Secure executive sponsorship and meet regularly to inform decisions.
Conduct Workflow and Process Analysis
Undertake a detailed examination of existing workflows for patient movement, clinician ordering, patient transport, housekeeping, and related processes. Identify pain points and process gaps that integration can help address. Map desired future state flows to establish critical data handoffs between the patient flow management software and EHR.
Assess Infrastructure Readiness
Catalog existing infrastructure such as networks, interfaces, data storage, and servers. Determine requirements for upgrading components to support increased load from integrated systems. Factor in growth projections as adoption expands. Budget for new servers grew bandwidth, or middleware as necessary.
Establish Robust Data Governance
Institute protocols, roles, policies, and procedures governing integrated data usage. Ensure patient privacy compliance and high data quality. Give data stewards responsibility for the continuity of data flows between systems. Monitor for errors or lags requiring intervention.
Define Technical Use Cases and Specifications
Create detailed use case diagrams illustrating necessary data exchange between the patient flow application and EHR. Specify required interfaces and customization needs. Confirm vendor solutions support these technical specifications. Build adapters if gaps exist.
Deploy and Test
A gradual rollout by the hospital area lets teams evaluate integrated workflows before facility-wide propagation — pilot low-risk modules first, like bed management dashboards. Pause to address lessons learned before integrating higher-risk modules like patient tracking sensors.
The integration journey requires intense collaboration across IT and hospital departments. Budgeting for patient flow management system and training can smooth progress. Integrating patient flow and EHRs promises gains in quality, safety, and hospital performance when executed deliberately.
Conclusion
Integrating patient flow management solutions with EHRs ushers a new era of connected digital health infrastructure. The promise of these synergies includes elevated quality of care. It also has reduced costs and healthier patients and communities. To actualize this potential, provider organizations must invest in the integration process. They should enlist multidisciplinary perspectives and buy-in from across the entire care continuum. The effort promises operational and clinical gains that move the needle of performance. With sound implementation, integrated patient flow and EHR systems can provide the foundation for delivering healthcare value in the 21st century.
