Southwestern Vermont Medical Center (SVMC) is an integrated non-profit health system that includes a 99-bed hospital, 25 primary care and specialty care practices, and a foundation at nine total locations in Bennington and nearby New York and Massachusetts.
Committed to patient safety and quality care, SVMC took action when they noticed their manual processes for vital sign documentation and IV pump programming were taking nurses away from the bedside and creating an increased risk for error. They needed a solution that could simplify processes without disrupting current workflows.
The Ease of Smart Pump Programming
With the addition of ICU Medical smart pumps, SVMC looked to Accelero Connect to integrate their devices. A challenge emerged for incorporating their Citrix single sign on desktop so users could self-authenticate through their active directory. With some additional help from iatricSystems’ Flexbutton™, a workflow integration solution, SVMC now has a smart pump programming solution that “can almost be described as magic for the end user,” said Janis Yanotti, RN, Senior Clinical Systems Analyst. “The relative ease of sending a smart pump programming instead of the nurse having to manually program the pump is a huge timesaver. An Accelero Connect enhancement allows nurses to simply scan the pump twice to send the programming instead of walking back and forth around the bed between the computer and the pump.”
Improved Safety, Compliance, and Billing
The benefits of Accelero Connect went beyond improving patient safety with smart pump programming. “The addition of customizable error messages and real-time smart pump programming reports are a game changer for understanding any failure points in the system, order, or user workflow. We can give feedback to users in real-time, make edits to any order that’s missing an element for successful programming, and identify IV pumps that aren’t connected to the WiFi” said Janis Yanotti, RN. “Also, having the stop times and volume infused flow into the EMR helped us maintain compliance with CMS sepsis measures and greatly improved our billing cycle for outpatients. There are potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars you can recoup by having start and stop times automatically flow in.”
Better Documentation and Patient Care
Using Accelero Connect to seamlessly integrate their vital sign monitors and IV smart pumps with their EHR, SVMC quickly saw an improvement in their clinical documentation and workflows. “When a system can improve the workflow and minimize the potential for errors, the nurses can better focus their time on caring for the patient at the bedside,” said Janis Yanotti, RN.
“As an early adopter of this process, we worked jointly with iatricSystems to understand how the software works and how it integrates user workflows” said Janis Yanotti, RN. “For example, we had to modify some of the medication orders in our prebuilt provider order sets so they were better aligned with how the pumps are auto-programmed. In some instances, iatricSystems built custom codes to match up with our order types. At the end of the process all things must align with precision. iatric has great attention to all of these details.”
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