As part of the Customer Experience team, we work with healthcare organizations that have taken Surveillance beyond our expectations, coming up with ingenious uses for MEDITECH’s predictive analytics solution. We’re amazed at our customers’ creativity as they take advantage of Surveillance’s versatility in supporting quality, safety, and efficiency. Seeing what our customers have accomplished individually, we wondered if bringing them together with MEDITECH staff would continue to push the envelope, and help us to optimize this flexible solution.
Partnering for patient-centered care
Motivated by the success of MEDITECH’s [other] collaboratives, we reached out initially to a select group of customer representatives from large and small healthcare organizations across the country, as well as our colleagues from Development, Product Management, Implementation, Client Services, and Clinical Excellence; the newly formed Surveillance Collaborative held our inaugural meeting in February.
Our mission is simple: to enhance clinical outcomes with real-time quality improvements and rapid interventions via Surveillance alerts and trackers. The collaborative’s efforts align with clinical best practices and support common clinical objectives, but also explore innovative uses for this versatile tool to broaden its impact on patient care — beyond conditions, quality measures, therapies/consults, and other preventative measures.
With two virtual meetings under our belt, we’ve learned that bringing customers and staff together has led to inspired discussions on how to optimize Surveillance, and has enhanced our professional relationships with each other.
Creating solutions to common healthcare challenges
Our customer community and MEDITECH subject matter experts exchange ideas on all things Surveillance, from product development to usability. Members share their knowledge and experience, offer guidance, conceptualize best practices, and provide feedback on future design efforts. In addition, customers are invited to share their own innovative uses for Surveillance.
Recently, Lisa Ledwell, an IT analyst at Frederick Health, presented the hospital’s specialty bed management status board to the collaborative. Because materials management and environmental services tools tend to be geared toward inventory and maintenance, Lisa and her colleagues created a board to assist nurses with locating specialty beds for their patients. Frederick Health uses Surveillance to find orders for and pinpoint deployments of specialty beds, as well as track in which rooms they’re located. This status board has proven to be especially effective in supporting nurses when new specialty beds need to be obtained.
Lisa and her colleagues were so pleased with the specialty bed management status board’s success that they’ve been thinking about creating status boards to track other types of durable medical equipment that move from room to room, such as telemetry boxes and wound vacuums. These DME-related boards would give clinicians, as well as technicians who clean the equipment, a bird's eye view of devices’ locations throughout the health system.
Joining the collaborative
All Expanse customers are welcome, as everyone's input on workflow and processes is valuable in our efforts to help clients optimize their MEDITECH EHR. Because participation contributes to the forum’s success, we’re looking for members who would like to lead topics and take an active part in conversations, but it’s not mandatory.
In a recent survey, customer members were asked to share some of the benefits they’ve experienced since joining the collaborative. Many representatives noted that they found discussing future and desired Surveillance enhancements and participating in customer discussions to be particularly helpful.
“I am very new to my position and to building in the Client Services side of MEDITECH,” wrote Tara Zaugg of Golden Valley Memorial Healthcare. “Listening to the discussion and being a part of this collaboration has given me some exposure to Surveillance that I otherwise would not have had because it is not something that I support in my position.”
If you’re interested in joining the Surveillance Collaborative, please contact Surveillance Analyst Larissa DeGregorio or Senior Manager Jonathan Hallman. Our third quarter meeting, conducted via Zoom, is scheduled for Thursday, July 11, 2024 (11 a.m. EDT), and will run for approximately one hour. For more information about the group, please see our Surveillance Collaborative page.
Participating in our Surveillance Customer Showcase
In addition to the Surveillance Collaborative, MEDITECH offers the Surveillance Customer Showcase, an initiative that highlights how clients are using our predictive analytics solution to improve workflow policies and even facilitate CMS reporting. Begun in 2023, these webinars are offered approximately once per quarter. Register for our next session, on June 18, 2024 (10 a.m. EDT), and view recordings of past showcase webinars here.
Download or view our booklet of case study summaries and success stories to find out how customers are improving outcomes.
