Introduction
Moving and relocating patients in and out of the emergency department (ED) is a laborious task and a struggle for most hospitals nationwide. The delays that result from these relocations can be very frustrating especially during the discharge of a patient. Many hospitals have tackled the challenge through implementing and integrating the McKesson's patient tracking system into their Health Systems. The new technology has been able to redesign the health systems' workflow and accelerated patient throughput, thereby resulting to drastic reduction in patient's stay, enhanced care and eliminating diversion hours.
McKesson Tracking Board System
Many hospitals face numerous challenges with health systems that are not robust and do not integrate admissions, discharge or transfer of patients in their systems. This can lead to failed communications and challenges of tracking patients from their rooms to procedures. It results to wasted time for the physicians making the rounds. Delays in bed coordinators, environmental service staff, and patient transporters cause unnecessary inconveniences to hospital facilities. However, the implementation of the McKesson's STAR Patient Location Tracker in a hospital's Health System, through admissions, discharge and transfer (A/D/T) system, accelerates bed availability, track transporters and patients, tracks bed utilization, provides productivity and utilization statistics through prediction and design by the tracking system (Potter, 2005).
The tracking system is interoperable and integrates into a hospital's health system. Its functions are redesigned to shorten processes and length of stay by patients in the emergency department with reduction of diversion hours. The system has a color coded dashboard where personnel admitting patients can accelerate the admittance process by checking the room status of the facility. The staff, nurses or physicians and even visitors can acquire information on a patient's location at any time. Different operations can be scheduled by physicians on patients without diversion of time. When a patient is discharged, the information is sent automatically to the tracking bed system which further generates housekeeping and patient transporter requests. The system allows efficient management in an enormous environment. The board can be used to reassign duties to staff to more hectic zones in the facility.
The tracking board system is used by many physicians and personnel acting both as an input and output device combined with the Practice Schedule Manager which is a flexible and powerful tool in a scheduling system which provides for room or equipment resources and personnel simultaneously. Physicians can use various options to input data including templates, transcription, speech recognition and keyboard entry. The need by physicians to retrieve same patient information, led to implementation of the McKesson tracker that extended clinical information systems to handheld Palm devices. This improves the streamlining of hospital process eliminating time consuming and ineffective administrative tasks. The mobile input and extensions have proved successful. Physicians can capture data in a single screen note and use touch to synchronize data. Ready access to important patient data is quickly acquired allowing for more patient interaction and attention (Austin, 2003).
The major output information on the board tracking system will detail the resources and the personnel to cater for the different patients being relocated to operation schedules or being discharged to effectively assess bed occupancy and special patient needs. Vital patient information is processed and printed to store records. Physicians can access this vital information to diagnose the various patients efficiently. Output devices that can be integrated into the McKesson tracker can include online copiers, scanners and stand-alone devices in a hospital's admissions processes. Managed print services can be integrated into the McKesson system in the online network so that information can be centrally managed and monitored. Access to charts processed by the tracker can be visible on handheld palms, thus real time output to patient information. This can allow relocation of staff and budgets to more critical areas in communication through the integrated health care systems. The hospital system can update admissions processes and backup critical information.
The McKesson hardware system is configured for easy installation with a network which is HER-certified that makes it's processing fast and efficient to data input, processing and output. The processing sequence of the tracker combines with a HP processing system to generate information relevant patients' data input and track their sequence predicting operations schedule by physicians. The hardware which can be used with the board tracking system can include the Lytec MD management system which integrates the feature of Bright Note Technology which aids in the automation of physicians chart processes. The installation package comes with training solutions, implementation and support systems and services for personnel and physicians in the hospital facility. Training and support documentation is provided to the staff in order to acquire the knowledge of operating the system.
Conclusion
The McKesson tracking board system has provided hospital facilities by driving organizational alignment by keeping up to date in communication, ensure process compliance through increasing accountability and transparency measures, and promote proactive behavior among the staff by anticipating various requests and needs of patients.
Reference:
Austin, C. J. (2003). Information Systems for Health Care Management. (6th Ed). Health Administration Press, Chicago.
Potter, M. (2005). The Tracking Board: Innovations in Advanced Practice.