Very few healthcare facilities exist as independent entities anymore. Health systems are merging, consolidating staff, procedures and electronic systems. And it’s not just hospitals! Health systems are purchasing physician practices, ambulatory clinics, rehab and home care facilities, pharmacies and more.
Making everyone agree on how to track and report data can be a full-time job. But with the increased attention to quality and patient experience metrics, it’s not something healthcare organizations can afford to ignore.
Take the example of Kaiser Permanente Northwest. Katie Veeninga presented a webinar about how KP Northwest was struggling with managing multiple ways of tracking patient safety data at different locations.
In 2013, KP Northwest was opening a new hospital, the first one to open in the Portland metro area in 30 years. So the team wanted to do it right! However, KP Northwest realized that it had three different processes for tracking patient safety events:
- Web-based system at the existing hospital
- Paper-based reporting process at ambulatory clinics
- An entirely different system and process for its non-patient care department
Benefits of having everyone on one electronic system:
- Better trending and analysis of quality and patient experience data with a shared taxonomy
- Comprehensive reports that you can share internally and externally, such as with regulatory bodies and PSOs
- Integrates with systems like EHRs, ADT, pharmacy and more
- Community support from others using the same system, from best practices to support through implementation to custom configurations
- Scalable! That means multiple modules that work together and a system powerful enough to handle the addition of new facilities.
In 2012, PCC starting using RL6 to capture adverse events. Now, all of PCC's home healthcare and rehab staff use RL6 to report incidents, using customized forms to capture information such as additional harms from falls. Read the full case study
