Technology As A Safety Net For Critical Environments

Innovation Technology As A Safety Net For Critical Environments Kelly Feist Forbes Councils Member Forbes Technology Council COUNCIL POST Expertise from Forbes Councils members, operated under license. Opinions expressed are those of the author. | Membership (fee-based) Jul 25, 2022, 10:15am EDT | Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Kelly Feist is managing director at Ascom Americas.

getty Benefit or device? I bet when you first think about technology, your mind goes to the benefit it brings you before you think about the specific device you’re using. Me too. Across industries, the outcomes technology drives are what matter most—whether it’s the hotel employee getting guests checked into their rooms faster or nurses proactively monitoring a patient to make sure patient deterioration is recognized and intervention happens.

Technology has long been an enabler, and it can accelerate almost any workflow. But it can do more than speed up processes. Let’s not underestimate it as a safety net, helping us prevent mistakes, especially in environments where human errors occur and constraints exist.

I wrote recently about the case of nurse RaDonda Vaught , who admitted making a fatal medication error and the role technology could play in helping reduce human error. In our healthcare delivery system, hospitals are graded and reimbursed with federal funds by how well they provide quality patient care. It’s certainly in their best financial interest to reduce preventable codes, falls and extended stays.

Up to 17% of all hospitalizations were affected by one or more adverse events, and of those, up to 70% were potentially avoidable. Imagine if technology could be the catalyst to reducing even a fraction of those events. In a study we ran, we found that workflow optimization technology could help reduce preventable codes by up to 10%.

But we also know technology for technology’s sake can have the opposite effect. Just because a device can do something doesn’t mean that it should. That’s why having the right stakeholders in each hospital design their protocols for workflow is important.

Each facility’s local patient population, resources and capabilities are unique. No universal playbook exists for how to implement technology in a hospital. Our clinical implementation team sees a lot of different hospitals and advises according to best practices we’ve collected across the world based on unit type, such as emergency department, labor and delivery, etc.

MORE FOR YOU Google Issues Warning For 2 Billion Chrome Users Forget The MacBook Pro, Apple Has Bigger Plans Google Discounts Pixel 6, Nest & Pixel Buds In Limited-Time Sale Event To reduce preventable codes, you have to discern what requires action and what doesn’t. One way hospitals can do this is to filter the nonactionable alerts to reduce alarm fatigue so nurses can respond only to actionable alerts when they happen. As a clinician, I can attest that having automated alert messaging, response tracking and predefined escalation chains make a difference, especially in the event of a code where time is of the essence.

The same logic goes for automating early warning scores to spot clinical trends that could signal deterioration before the adverse event occurs. These safety net catches by technology can add up to more proactive care with shorter hospital stays. At the same time, these safety net catches can help reduce the effect of some of the constraints nurses face today, such as caring for more and sicker patients without the benefit of years of experience gained on the job.

Technology can be a great democratizer for those entering the field and can free nurses up to do higher-value jobs, and we see the benefits of it pay off for hospitals, nurses and patients in meeting healthcare’s quadruple aim. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify? Follow me on LinkedIn .

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