St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center, a 431-bed facility in Syracuse, N.Y., is poised to roll out digital vital signs technology to the bedside. The system moves data directly to the patient’s electronic health record.
St. Joseph's served as a beta test site for the electronic documentation system developed by Skaneateles Falls, N.Y.-based Welch Allyn. The hospital reaped immediate results while testing the Connex EVD System, hospital executives said at a recent unveiling.
Anne Marie Czyz, chief nursing officer at St. Joseph's, said the hospital experienced improved documentation workflow, which translated in more time spent with the patients. The hospital also decreased the potential for errors, she said.
Before using the technology, clinicians documented vital sign data manually – perhaps on a piece of paper or even a napkin and later entered it into the electronic medical record.
"The Connex EVD System gave our facility tangible results that really maximized our EMR investment," Czyz said. "It helped us not only meet regulatory standards but also the time spent documenting vitals decreased by about 50 percent and errors decreased by about 75 percent. This solution is making it possible to provide higher-quality patient care and safety, the way it should be."
The numbers were tallied during the pilot. The hospital is slated to roll out the first batch of the bedside technology sometime this month.
Trinity Medical Center in Steubenville, Ohio, uses the same system on the med-surg units at its 471-bed hospital.
“We would often end up searching for patient vitals,” said Becky Pico, nurse and clinical manager. “Sometimes they’d turn up in a nurse’s pocket on a paper towel scrap. Then we’d have to go back and get that record into the EMR, or transcribe it manually on the paper charts.”
Bill Arnold, nursing informatics manager at Erie County Medial Center in Buffalo, N.Y. has tracked the time saved.
“We’ve eliminated anywhere from 20-30 minutes of vitals data documentation time per nurse, per shift,” he said.
By converging all aspects of vital signs documentation into one system, including patient data capture and wireless transfer to an EMR, medical charting and documentation errors are reduced thereby improving clinical decision-making and patient outcomes, say Welch Allyn executives.
Without a digital solution, 10,000 omission and/or transcription errors can occur per year for a typical 200-bed facility; 8,000 hours were wasted with manual vital sign documentation; and more than $250,000 was lost in productivity due to lack of access to vitals, according to studies cited by Welch Allyn executives.
"Every day there are challenges within acute care facilities, but these should not include inaccuracy of patient data, a lack of access to that data, or low efficiency with collecting vitals," said Dave Perkins, senior category manager, vital signs, at Welch Allyn.
