NURS6501 Week4 Discussion – ACA and The HITECH Act.

NURS6501 Week4 Discussion – ACA and The HITECH Act.

NURS6501 Week4 Discussion – ACA and The HITECH Act.

The Affordable Care Act. The HITECH Act. CMS reimbursement penalties. Federal legislation, combined with a growing patient population, boil down to a simple fact — health systems must become more efficient to meet demand, while increasing both the quality and safety of care. To meet this challenge, healthcare is looking to various technologies, including Real-time Locating Systems (RTLS). RTLS is like GPS for the indoors. It is a system that displays the real-time locations of people and things on a map. Recently, my hospital emergency room (ED) implemented the use of the RTLS by the nurses and the TECHs. It is called the Versus badge and the Nurses and the Techs wear it next to their identity badges. Healthcare professionals that work in a hospital emergency department, operating room, surgery center or medical clinic can waste a significant amount of time searching for their co-workers, placing phone calls or making repeated overhead pages. The end-result is inefficient workflow, increased staff frustration, decreased patient satisfaction, and a needlessly noisy environment. With Versus, My ED workers have 24/7 situational awareness to always know the location of their co-workers to quickly get everyone in the right place, at the right time for a more efficient workflow.

Versus eliminates the extra step nurses take to press the nurse call cancellation button when they enter a patient room.  One of the biggest daily frustrations for nurses comes when trying to literally climb over a variety of obstacles just to get to this often hard-to-reach button on the wall. Instead, they would much rather, and often need to, immediately focus on the patient. With automated nurse call cancellation, nurses simply wear the Versus badges. When the nurse enters a patient’s room, the correct nurse/Tech presence light turns on, and the patient call light turns off. When the staff leaves the room, the light automatically shuts off, and the response is logged with an accurate time stamp. No time spent on a non-value-added task, while more time is directed to the patient’s needs.

Nurses know that rounding is an important part of their job. Hourly rounding improves patient safety and even saves nurses time (Emerson & Chmura, 2013).  Nurses are often tasked with multiple duties, which can sometimes pull them away from direct patient care and cause them to lose focus on rounding. Versus helps keep nurses on track by automatically sending alert to remind staff that rounding is needed. Visual cues can also be displayed on electronic whiteboards or computer workstations. In addition to prompting nurses to act in real time, versus offers reports that help nurses continually improve overall rounding processes, ensuring that patient needs are always met. Both real-time and historical information help drive patient satisfaction levels higher. In addition, these nurse rounding reports can also be used to protect nurses from erroneous patient complaints, claiming that they have not been checked on.

Versus can assist staff in promptly obtaining help when and where they need help. The locator badge includes a button that acts as either a panic button, or a simple call for assistance. When pressed, an alert is automatically displayed in designated locations (i.e. nurses’ and/or security stations), noting who called for help, the time, and their exact location, so that help can be sent quickly. In a 2011 survey, 55% of emergency nurses reported experiencing physical violence or verbal abuse – and 98% of assaults are perpetrated by patients (Talas, Kocaoz, & Akguc, 2011). Healthcare workers’ significant risk of job-related violence has prompted the U.S. Occupational Safety & Health Administration to publish guidelines for preventing violence in the healthcare work place. Their recommendations for violence prevention programs include “installing panic alarm systems” and “personal alarm systems for staff and an appropriate system and way to contact security/ correctional officers.” (OSHA Recommendation, 2015). Versus badges programmed with panic buttons can directly satisfy these recommendations. Furthermore, if a nurse needs help lifting a patient, she can call for assistance while maintaining focus on the patient.

Versus can be used to monitor exposure to contagions. Outbreaks of communicable diseases have made top headlines over the years, and hospital emergency departments are on the front lines. When a patient was found to carry a contagion, my hospital was able to prevent an epidemic by the infection control department quickly producing a report providing all the details of staff exposed to the contagious patient. Infection control professionals with Versus data on their side got to work locating, notifying, testing and treating those who met the contagion.

The versus tracking device is really a very easy to use device that to this day has proven to be very

efficient in ensuring safety and patient satisfaction. The only problem We have had with this device is

that the device does not track outside the ED and the battery dies quickly if taken out of the ED

 

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NURS6501 Week4 Discussion – ACA and The HITECH Act References

Emerson, B. L. (2013). Hourly Rounding in the Pediatric Emergency Department: Patient and Family Safety and Satisfaction Rounds. Retrieved from Journal of Emergency Medicine: https://www-sciencedirect-com.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/science/article/pii/S0736467913014248?via%3Dihub

OSHA Safety and Health Program Management Guidelines. (2015, November). Retrieved from www.osha.gov: https://www.osha.gov/shpmguidelines/SHPM_guidelines.pdf

Talas, M. K. (2011). A Survey of Violence Against Staff Working in the Emergency Department in Ankara, Turkey. Retrieved from Science Direct: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1976131711000247