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the room, asked about allergies and ... you get the picture. With the new system, that data flows all the way through. Complete patient information is in front of you — allergies, assessments, surgical history, medical history — and you present competent staff communication to the patient.
• Less time spent gathering analytical data. Our chief medical officer recently asked for a list of the surgeries our surgeons performed in the past 6 months. What would have taken me 6 to 8 hours to compile I was able to print out in 5 minutes — complete with graphs and tables. And with data at my fingertips, we can benchmark our performance against other hospitals and facilities using a nationwide standard for documentation, not our old homegrown documentation.
• More precise ability to monitor costs. I can open the analytics page and see the downtime for each OR, where it's occurring, turnover and why there are delays. I can see outlier surgeons that are costing us more to do a specific procedure. All this data helps me create plans to improve our throughput.
• Better patient tracking. Our split screen details patient location and provides proactive management of patient throughput, thus enhancing capacity management. That leads to better staff utilization throughout the entire department.
What I learned
As our nurses get more familiar with the system, their documentation time is decreasing. They're spending less time monkeying with the computer and more time at the bedside doing patient care. All these positive outcomes required planning, including input from all who use the system, and lots and lots of education. When I think back on this past year and a half, here are the lessons I learned:
1. Get buy-in from as many stakeholders as possible.
