Bon Secours Mercy Hospital introduced final week that it has entered right into a 10-year partnership with medical system producer Royal Philips that may standardize affected person monitoring techniques throughout all 49 of its hospitals. The Cincinnati-based Catholic well being system believes the expertise improve will finally scale back price burdens and rework care supply.

In an interview, a Bon Secours nurse government mentioned the group’s hospitals have totally different monitoring techniques, which means nurses and docs must look after sufferers barely in a different way relying on the situation.

“Beforehand, 80 p.c of our {hardware} expertise was Phillips. It was a unique sort of system, and now we have centralized, decentralized, several types of processes and workflows,” mentioned Jodi Pahl, chief nursing officer for workforce expertise and nursing outcomes. “This enables us to standardize that throughout all of our amenities.”

No monetary particulars of the partnership have been disclosed, however it isn’t a value-based deal.

Beforehand, when monitoring a affected person’s coronary heart rhythm, nurses needed to manually transfer that cardiac knowledge into the affected person’s medical report. As soon as the expertise improve happens, the info will mechanically combine with Epic and be positioned within the affected person’s EMR.

“So even when a expertise like exporting wave strips (coronary heart rhythm monitoring) – as an alternative of our nurses taking part in kindergarten and copying and pasting, it will mechanically go proper into Epic so the wave strips may be seen by docs or nurses or anybody in Epic.[configured] “{Hardware},” Pahl defined.

All this automated era of data instantly within the EMR can solely imply one factor: much less technical burden and subsequently much less burnout for clinicians, which might undermine affected person care. A nurse’s job when monitoring sufferers is to not “monitor the displays and cope with the gear,” defined Julia Strandberg, Chief Enterprise Chief, Related Care at Philips. That’s the place the Amsterdam-based firm’s expertise can have a profound influence on affected person care, she believes.

Strandberg identified that it’s not only a matter of connecting very important indicators from Philips {hardware} to the EMR. However the info system that drives Philips monitoring {hardware} is also despatched to clinicians in different components of the hospital. Nurses may additionally get the identical info on their telephones.

“It's additionally a pipeline that connects that info to cellular models, centralized management models and dashboards that will exist within the departments, in order that the appropriate individuals get the appropriate info on the proper time, with out having to do further work,” she mentioned.

Pahl defined that the expertise can be able to passing an issue on to another person, for instance if a nurse is busy with one other affected person when one other affected person in care wants instant help.

“The fantastic thing about that is that each nurse has a [smartphone] and the communication goes on to that system with the power to see the guts rhythm on the system. And there's an escalation course of within the background. So if I'm taking good care of one other affected person and I can't go to [the other patient]it is going to mechanically escalate for us,” Pah mentioned. “And what’s nice about Phillips is simply the intelligence behind the pipes, let’s say the place we will work out these nuisance alarms and actually leverage the expertise in order that the nurse will get the true alarms that she wants and in a well timed method proper to our cellphone.”

The primary three years of the partnership will likely be spent on implementing the {hardware} and software program system on the 49 hospitals, whereas the final seven years will likely be spent on upkeep, based on the contract between Bon Secours and Philips. Though full implementation continues to be three years away, the aid Pahl feels is instant and palpable.

“You don't perceive how lengthy we've been standardizing issues [in terms of] {hardware} and software program, and that is such a aid that we will say to our nurses: it will aid you work extra effectively,” Pahl famous.

Photograph: metamorworks, Getty Photos