How a Surgery Center Achieved Streamlined Excellence with PHP [Case Study]
Amidst their state-of-the-art facilities and unwavering commitment to unparalleled patient experiences, Vivere-Audubon Surgery Center faced a...
4 min read
Performance Health Partners
July 7, 2022
Safety rounds are conducted by healthcare organizations to identify risk and address problem areas before they become bigger employee and patient safety issues. Safety checklists within a comprehensive, rounding technology solution are a crucial part of rounding, as they empower healthcare teams to stay focused on what matters most: delivering the highest quality care in the safest possible environment.
Today’s digital rounding solutions streamline efforts to effectively round on patients, manage risks, and make the delivery of care as efficient as possible.
We can’t fix what we don’t know is broken. That’s why we visit our physician for an annual checkup, check the air in our tires before a road trip, and regularly test the batteries in our smoke alarms.
The same rings true in healthcare, which is why organizations conduct patient safety rounds. The idea that undetected or dormant problems can intensify into devastating situations is the concept behind hospital safety rounds, which are part of a larger strategy to ensure high-quality patient care.
When healthcare teams make the effort to observe whether systems and processes worked correctly through effective patient rounding, they are able to identify the warning signs of potential accidents and events such as:
Unfortunately, because care teams are typically focused solely on providing the best patient care in a busy environment, they sometimes overlook the little details that can make a big difference in outcomes. That’s why it’s important for organizations to ensure the physical environment is as safe as possible, always.
The good news is that technology can enhance the rounding process, helping organizations improve their safety efforts, patient satisfaction, and employee engagement.
As points of care increase in number and type, rounding software is becoming more robust, and is useful for several types of rounding. Use cases for rounding software include:
Rounding technology can help multi-disciplinary teams conduct safety rounds more efficiently and effectively, with the goal of detecting and addressing patient safety risks as quickly as possible.
For example: A mobile workstation removes the need to use bothersome and time-consuming manual processes during rounds. Organizations can instead use digital tools to evaluate performance, input rounding data, and develop immediate action plans – in just a few clicks.
Rounding software also enables teams to conduct assessments quickly and conveniently, as technology facilitates rounding processes by standardizing templates, including checklists. Then, based on the collected data, risks can be immediately identified and classified.
Should the team recognize an issue during rounds, a structured digital incident reporting system makes incident reporting forms accessible via computer, tablet, or smartphone. The system then triggers an automatic workflow to ensure the appropriate people are notified in real-time. If the issue isn’t resolved within a specific amount of time, the technology automatically escalates the event to a manager or supervisor.
Digital dashboards help teams visualize and understand the risks and display the status of all assessments in addition to the resulting measures. Teams can easily translate the assessment into interventions that reflect the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle:
In addition to optimizing quality, rounding software can improve the patient experience, as technology solutions help healthcare organizations measure and improve patient satisfaction during patient stays.
In a 2018 KLAS Research survey, respondents noted several key meaningful outcomes achieved with using technology to round on patients. Among the most common were improved patient satisfaction, immediate feedback and recovery, accountability/compliance, and better collaboration among care teams.
Thanks to ever-evolving technological solutions, healthcare organizations can easily and continuously improve upon the systems they’ve already developed and implemented. Another effective way of enhancing existing rounding processes is by incorporating additional technologies that have the power to expand the impact of virtual rounding.
Some of these technologies include:
Implementing rounding and incident reporting software is an integral part of establishing an effective patient safety culture.
With Performance Health Partner’s digital rounding solution, healthcare organizations can take action against the harmful effects of safety incidents, while focusing on improving the quality of the care experience.
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