Sustainability Agenda:

• Waste Reduction
• Transparency and Work Flow Efficiency
• Safer and Improved Patient Care Environment

Technology Article:

“In healthcare today, the patient experience is of utmost importance. By accurately capturing where our delays were, we were able to identify our primary challenges and implement solutions to directly impact those areas.”

By: Kristen Brown, Clinical Manager of Children’s National Health System

Source: http://www.savancehealth.com/portals/0/Case-Studies/Childrens-National-Cancer-Center-Case-Study.pdf

Summary (Challenges):

Children’s National Health System is a pediatric care provider in Washington, D.C. For over 140 years, Children’s National has pioneered new therapies and treatments across a wide array of medical specialties, from neonatal services to cancer care.

The Children’s National Cancer Center is a very busy outpatient clinic, with 100+ providers, seeing 200+ patients each day. At Children’s National, successful cancer treatment is not just about delivering medication, but also about providing a friendly, comfortable environment where patients can feel safe for the duration of their treatment. This includes providing art and music therapy to patients while they wait.

When a child comes in for cancer treatment, the visit often is a multi-step process that takes hours. Accompanied by their parents or other caregivers, patients must sign in, give vital signs, have blood drawn, wait for lab results, see clinicians, and perhaps sit through lengthy chemotherapy infusions. There were so many moving parts going on at one time. Lab results might take an hour or two and patients would get bored and wander. Or, they might leave the unit for radiology or some ancillary service and would need to be tracked down at every turn. Children’s National spent too much time simply looking for their patients.

The excessive wait times, and a general lack of information made for a less than pleasant patient experience. The clinical processes had become inefficient and there was no data to track the patient flow to find and fix bottlenecks. Children’s National wanted to make the system more transparent to families, making it possible for everyone to know where they stood in line to be seen by their providers.

Children’s National tackled the challenges inherent in paper-based information flows—and in the process also increased its own staff efficiency. The Savance Health Staff Tracking solution was used to improve communication and workflow, and healthcare team organization. This significantly decreases patient wait times and increases patient satisfaction.

Technology Stakeholders:

1. Healthcare Institutions (Children’s National Cancer Center)
2. Healthcare Providers (Primary Care Technician, Clinic Operations Manager Doctors, Nurses, Clinicians, etc)
3. Patients (children) and their parents, other caregivers/family members

Technology Deployment: 

Savance Health deployed customized solutions: Patient Self Check-In, Waiting Room Display, and Patient Tracking & Flow solutions, helping Children’s National completely transform the workflow of its cancer and blood disorders unit so that when a patient arrives at the clinic, their adult caregiver signs them in at an easy-to-use touch-screen kiosk.

Savance Health Patient Self Check-In can pull information straight from an ID card, a driver’s license, or an insurance card, and easily fill out the patient’s address, phone number, current doctor, current medications, insurance, and date of birth. The solution delivers two key benefits: accurate and complete patient information – acquired through a patient-friendly process.

Once the patient has signed in, Savance’s Patient Tracking & Flow solution takes the mystery out of clinical workflows and patient location. The software tracks where patients are at any given time, and how much time they spend in each area. A display screen in the waiting room —with patient names symbolized by pictures of animals to maintain confidentiality— tells families how many patients are ahead of them to see their specific provider.

Another screen in the clinic workroom shows where patients stand in the day’s workflow. This allows Children’s Health not only to find patients quickly without searching the building, but also to see where process breakdowns occur and take steps to increase workflow efficiency.

Technology Benefits:

1. Simplify patient sign-in with self-service check-in kiosk
2. Ability to time-stamp patient flow though clinic to monitor detail
3. Free staff from physically tracking down patients
4. Optimize patient and staff scheduling
5. Leverage patient flow data to alleviate bottlenecks during peak demand
6. Improve patient experience through better communication and shorter wait times

Other references:

1. http://www.savancehealth.com/Case-Studies/Childrens-National-Health-System.aspx
2. http://www.eioboard.com/Solutions/Visitor-Management.aspx
3. http://www.savancehealth.com/Solutions/Patient-Self-Check-In.aspx
4. http://www.savancehealth.com/Case-Studies/Valley-Childrens-Hospital.aspx