Studies in health technology and informatics
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2013
Exploring the potential of an electronic documentation system to reduce length of stay.
Electronic patient records are important in patient data management. Aim of this 2-year study was to investigate the effect of an e-documentation system on the ED length of stay. The study compared three length of stay parameters with and without the use of a prototype e-documentation system. 99 of trauma patients were monitored with the use of the electronic system and 101 patients (control group) were monitored with traditional methods. ⋯ Similar effect was also found to the total ED length of stay (127±93 vs. 206±41 minutes) and time between completion of care and ED exit (26±10 vs. 57±23 minutes). LOS was reduced with the e-documentation system. This is important for the quality of trauma patient care, since saving time during the first hours after the accident usually determines the outcome of trauma patients.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2013
Investigating the impact of an emergency information system on patient's length of stay in the emergency department of a tertiary hospital in Saudi Arabia.
The emergency department has a crucial role in saving patient's lives. Efficient and reliable information through reliable information systems contribute to effective communication in these situations and ultimately shorter lengths of stay (LOS). ⋯ Furthermore, longer LOS was associated with patients who required clinical services (pathology, radiology) due to the manual retrieval of results. This study has found that future implementation of a comprehensive electronic information system will facilitate effective communication workflow and timely access to patient data in the emergency department.
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Handheld technology finds slowly its place in the healthcare world. Some clinicians already use intensively dedicated mobile applications to consult clinical references. However, handheld technology hasn't still broadly embraced to the core of the healthcare business, the hospitals. ⋯ To answer these questions, we have set up a field study to compare users' performances on three different user interfaces while recording vital signs. Some user interfaces were familiar to users, and others were totally innovative. Results showed that users' familiarity with smartphone influences their performances and that users improve their performances by repeating a task.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2013
Use of knowledge discovery techniques to understand nurse practitioner practice patterns and their integration into a healthcare system.
The objective of this study is to assess the feasibility of applying knowledge discovery techniques to identifying nurse practitioner practice patterns and enacted scope of practice. For the research, we plan to use data extracted from a Ministry of Health database. The data items are focused around: nurse practitioner demographics, health authorities, and encounter types. This analysis produces patterns that indicate relationships between the demographics, scope of practice and practice settings of nurse practitioners working in British Columbia.
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The complexity of hospital operations ensures that one-size-fits-all solutions seldom work. As hospitals turn to evidence based strategies to redesign flow, it is critical that they tailor the strategies to suit their individual service. This paper analyses the effect of hospital occupancy on inpatient and emergency department patient flow parameters at the Caboolture hospital in Queensland, Australia, and identifies critical levels, or choke points, that result in performance decline. ⋯ We compare these findings to a previous study that has analysed patient flow across Queensland hospitals grouped by size, and discover several differences in the interaction between rising occupancy and patient flow parameters including rates of patient flow, length of stay, and access block. We also identify significantly higher choke points for Caboolture hospital as compared to other similarly sized Queensland hospitals, which suggest that patient flow here can be redesigned to operate at higher levels of occupancy without degrading flow performance. The findings support arguments for hospitals to analyse patient flow at a service level to deliver optimum service improvement.