EMS Relay increases the quality of data being used , resulting in the patient receiving the most accurate care possible
Navigating the Pre-hospital to Emergency Room Transition with ...
Continued from page 5
care in the field , get to the hospital , and stop care . Hospital staff has no idea what is going on with the patient and is playing catch up to get resources in place and teams mobilized . Typical waiting times upon arrival to the ER average five minutes to get the patient entered into the EHR . When CPR is being performed and you need Epinephrine , five minutes is an extremely long time to wait .
Enter John Doe . If the hospital chooses to register the patient as a generic “ filler ” ID , a staff member has to go back , and move all procedures and charges to the new record . Based on a study done by Just Associates , the cost to merge records is an average of $ 96 per incident . 1 This error doesn ’ t take into account the patient safety issue with medications and allergies .
“ Overlays ” need to happen when a patient has two records needing to be merged , which costs the facility time and money in clerical costs to merge the records . Denied claims can happen as a result of incomplete or conflicting information . 92 % of denied claims are due to incorrect or incomplete information . 2
“ Duplicate medical records ” are another big problem effecting from 10-22 % of patient databases . A real life example is that a patient goes to the ER by the name of Jim , as that ’ s what his friends call him . The next day , the same patient goes to the hospital as James , because he is with family . James now has a record of being seen yesterday that is completely overlooked . James gets the same X-rays , labs , and treatments as the day before , but because he was identified as different person , the staff duplicated efforts . This redundancy in procedures is an average of $ 1,100 per incident . 3
Solution : EMS Relay
Having a deep understanding of this problem and the impact it has on EMS , ER staff , and of course the patient is important to evaluate . A team of paramedics evaluated the exact workflow of getting a patient received into the Emergency Room , and the simple solution of sending more data was found . This outcome , coupled with the fact that consumer electronics makes adoption as easy a downloading an app , was the precursor to EMS Relay .
EMS Relay increases the quality of data being used , resulting in the patient receiving the most accurate care possible
EMS Relay was formed to dive deep into this transition in care . The app allows emergency medical staff to capture images and video from the field for the hospital to instantaneously see all activity . Because the app is HIPAA compliant , anything from EKGs , to injuries , to motor vehicle accident mechanism , to stroke symptoms , and even registration information can be seen minutes before the patient arrives . Current methods of contacting the hospital by phone or radio , then having to describe what is seen is outdated , subjective , and provides little useable information . EMS Relay increases the quality of data being used , resulting in the patient receiving the most accurate care possible .
Feedback : The Pilot Project
Over the course of a 9-month pilot , over 600 patients had their demographic information sent straight from the scene , to the ER for preregistration . On average , this information was received 11 minutes prior to patient arrival , compared to a delay of 5 minutes with the traditional method . With this shift in registration during the lifespan of a patient encounter , patients were registered over 15 minutes sooner in the overall event . The actual time it took patient access associates to get a patient registered and banded , was 5 minutes and 8 seconds , the whole time the patient was unable to receive medications and treatment . Most of this time was spent waiting for EMS to hand off information , or walking to and from the room . EMS Relay accepts information on an iPad in the ER . Staff had a 25 second task time when receiving information via the EMS Relay app . Time on task was reduced by 4 minutes and 43 seconds , and stress of registering the patient upon arrival has been decreased .
This change in workflow has provided staff with a low stress and efficient environment to register patients . The five minute rushed registration has now been turned into a simple 25-second patient entry .
Emergency Medical Services have also noticed a change in metrics . Crews that preregister their patients have a turn time of four to six minutes sooner since all formalities are taken care of before arriving . When looking at the financial impact with one of our EMS partners , they estimated with ten trucks running ten calls a day , we would save them $ 470 per day in being more efficient , not including the additional calls that can now be run due to the improved turn times . 6
October / November 2016
Finally , consider what this new process does for patient experience when they are rushed into the ER where they are preregistered and care begins immediately . Furthermore , they can be greeted with a “ Hello Mr . Davis , welcome to our facility .” Most importantly , the patient not needing to complete forms now receives care five minutes faster !
References
1 . Just Associates , Inc . Duplicate Records Compromise EHR Investment . 2011
2 . Do you know who ’ s in your EHR ? August , 2009 Healthcare Financial Management
3 . The Risk of Duplicate Medical Records , Authur J . Gallager and Co .
About EMS Relay
EMS Relay , formed by a group of paramedics with a deep understanding of pre-hospital chaos , focuses on the difficult transition in care from the field to the Emergency Room . Utilizing simple technology , Emergency Room staff is now able to view and use critical data to prepare for the incoming patient as accurately as possible . By smoothing out this transition , the patient is able to have the most streamlined transition in care possible . •