TRAVEL TRACKER
Automated Stability Scale Built Into Travel Tracker
As the third largest public hospital in America, UAB Hospital conducts
more than 600 intra-facility patient transfers daily. UAB’s Patient Safety
Committee recognized the unique challenges of ensuring patients’
travel with the appropriate staff resources, and in 2015, a two-week
study within Radiology found that 84% (163/193) of patient transfers did
not have appropriate escort skill level documentation. Low compliance
of documenting the required escort skill level likely was the result of
increasing patient and EMR complexity. A plan was developed to use
clinical triggers from the EMR to auto-populate escort skill level into
patient travel documentation.
An interdisciplinary team worked to identify clinical triggers based
on UAB’s existing patient transport policy, targeting automation of
the process that determines the required escort skill level. Clinical
triggers were developed through multiple plan-do-study-act cycles and
regression analysis of prior patient safety incidents in procedural areas
during, or immediately after, patient transport. In February 2016, five
nursing units were selected for a pilot of the newly automated process,
which demonstrated 100% compliance with stability documentation
with no patient safety events during patient transport from the selected
pilot units. In September 2017, the automated Travel Tracker was
deployed hospital-wide.
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UAB Quality and Safety Annual Report