On our most recent episode of the MEDITECH podcast, I was joined by two IT leaders from The Valley Hospital (Ridgewood, NJ), Alicia Brubaker, RN, Director of Clinical Informatics and Chris Neumann, Clinical Analyst for Surveillance, to discuss how they used surveillance tools to cut documentation time for nurses during the pandemic.
Only one hour outside of New York City, the COVID-19 pandemic hit The Valley Hospital quickly in the spring of 2020. “We saw that in New York, the numbers were going up and I think there were a few patients trickling in,” recalls Brubaker. “We really had no way to truly prepare, because we went from having a few patients one day to almost 200 patients three days later.”
The clinical informatics and Information systems teams had to change everything they were doing very quickly, creating new order sets, new care plans, and new locations to handle the amount of patients coming in. From there, they used surveillance to monitor ventilator usage and patient status as well as other reports.
“One of the components was cutting back documentation for nursing, and this was a huge thing. We sat down and decided with some of the clinical leaders what we were going to cut back,” explains Brubaker. “We created a brief admission assessment which cut our real admission assessment down to probably a third of what it normally is, to really expedite the process of documentation, and give staff a lot more time at the bedside.”
Listen to the full podcast above to hear how Valley utilized surveillance to reduce nurse burnout, engage their community with social media, and support staff throughout the height of the pandemic.
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