How patient technology can support your hospital’s initiatives

One of the things the SONIFI Health team does during implementation of a new system is talk to the clinical staff to see what initiatives they have going on in their hospital, and how the patient technology they have can support those initiatives.

Here are some of the ways our clinical nursing team has helped hospitals promote what matters most at their organization.

Length of stay

Decreasing length of stay is a big issue for a lot of hospitals. Patients want to get home as soon as possible, and there’s always some last-minute discharge teaching that can be a hold up.

So one of the things hospitals can do to help is automate the education for their patients. As soon as their care plan is activated in the EHR, that education is assigned to the patient, and they can start early in their stay watching the education they need, completing it in advance to free up time during the discharge process.

Reminding patients of the education they have with prompts on digital whiteboards and the ITV also helps get that compliance rate up and completed before the last minute.

Adding a discharge checklist to the interactive TV also helps prep patients ahead of time to streamline everything that needs to happen, and questions they want answered, before going home.

Falls reduction

A big initiative in most hospitals is focusing on reducing falls.

If a patient is at risk for falls, that’s documented in the EHR and integrated with the hospital’s patient technology.

On the staff side, that fall risk notation automatically appears on patient door signs and digital whiteboards as reminder alerts to keep that awareness top of mind for clinicians as they interact with patients.

On the patient side, education about falls can be automated to populate on the interactive TV, putting it front and center for the patients and families to learn how they can prevent falling.

Whatever the hospital’s messaging around fall prevention is—“call, don’t fall” being a common one—can also be added to the interactive TV’s main screen and in a widget on digital whiteboards for prominent visibility for patients and their families to keep everyone safe. (We’ve seen this approach work well for a variety of other hospital initiatives, like handwashing or vaccination campaigns.)

Making it easy for patients to do things for themselves without getting out of bed and risking a fall can also be an important preventive step.

We see this a lot with smart room controls—like temperature, window blinds, and lighting—that patients can adjust themselves using the interactive TV or voice assistants.

Adding patient requests to the TV also helps give patients autonomy and convenience in a safe and efficient way (while also saving staff time).

Staff recognition

Many hospitals look for ways to make patients and families aware of recognition programs like the DAISY Award to give a shout out to those clinicians who are helping make life better every day.

An easy way to get that information in front of patients is to add a QR code to the interactive TV that goes right to the nomination form when patients or their family members scan the code. This can be done for any recognition program that has a website for people to submit nominations—recognizing care techs, housekeeping, or dietary staff, for example.

Hospitals also use the interactive TV to showcase the recipients of these awards and programs, giving another avenue to highlight the people who make their organization so great.

HCAHPS scores

Something that all hospital executives are looking at closely are HCAHPS scores. There are so many elements throughout a patient’s stay that can affect their feedback that it can be difficult to pinpoint where to direct your attention.

That’s why SONIFI Health’s customer success executives and nursing executives work so closely with each hospital to determine how technology can help.

Features of our interactive TV and digital whiteboard solutions have been specifically designed to support improvements in communication, education, and satisfaction, among many other areas surveyed in HCAHPS questions.

We’ve consistently seen hospitals improve their HCAHPS scores after working with SONIFI Health, even when compared to similarly sized hospitals in their area. Here’s a 5-year HCAHPS case study, as an example.

 

Working one-on-one with each hospital to really cater their system to their needs is that key step in seeing actual results that impact hospital initiatives.

To see what it could look like for your organization, book a free online demo here.