The Health Care RFID Blog

Do You Know How Your Organization Can Get a Piece of the Pie?

On Friday, Feb. 12, the White House announced nearly $1 billion in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds designated for healthcare providers to use toward the implementation of health information technology (HIT) and to train thousands of workers for healthcare jobs. According to an article in HealthLeaders Media, these funds are expected to help make HIT available to more than 100,000 hospitals and primary care physicians by 2014 and to support the training of thousands of people for careers in healthcare and HIT. Of the $1 billion allocated for this initiative, $750 million is set aside in grant awards that will help enable more healthcare providers to have access to HIT and help facilitate healthcare providers’ adoption of electronic health records (EHRs).

With HIMSS 2010 right around the corner, funding will certainly be top of mind for healthcare providers looking at thousands of different HIT options. Do you know how to go about getting these funds for your organization? Do you know the types of HIT implementations that are eligible to receive these funds?

It’s somewhat ironic that so many exciting – and cost-saving – technologies are available to serve the health care industry, including advanced RFID and RTLS solutions, but in these economic times many health systems have been forced to cut technology investments. The White House announcement provides more opportunity for health care organizations to go beyond EMR implementation and look for additional HIT that will help drive efficiencies and ultimately improve patient care. Because the RFID/RTLS technology solutions that Dynamic Computer provides can greatly reduce costs, minimize risks and improve patient care, many of our prospects are eligible for these grants, but likely not aware of the guidelines.

In a past blog post we introduced our partnership with IMGrants, a funding research program offered by Ingram Micro to qualified resellers.  This relationship affords us the ability to help you identify, apply for and maximize federal funds, including those that are a result of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, as well as state and foundation grant sources for projects. IMGrants is helping us connect healthcare providers with the money they need to improve their bottom lines and delivery of service.

Through our IMGrants partnership we can help you answer your key questions about obtaining grants and the types of HIT eligible for the more than $750 million in new grant funds. We will be at HIMSS10 (booth 2920)and encourage you to stop by to learn more about how Dynamic can help your organization through this dramatic change in the healthcare industry.

Meeting the JCAHO National Patient Safety Goals is no small task for any healthcare provider. Knowing JCAHO can call any day to inform you that it will audit your facility seems to be a constant fear in the industry. The JCAHO certification is an absolute MUST to be considered a reputable healthcare provider that provides a safe environment for both patients and staff. The National Patient Safety Goals serve as a scorecard for JCAHO. Healthcare providers must prove they are benchmarking toward these goals and demonstrate the steps they are taking to ensure they meet them in a timely manner.

So where do you start? Looking at a list of eight major initiatives can be intimidating. It is important to take a holistic approach to meeting these goals, not just simply checking them off a list as individual tasks.  At the end of the day, it is essentially one goal: creating an environment that is safe.

Here are a few steps you can take when tackling the 2010 NPSG:

1.       Get in front of it.

•  Don’t wait to receive the call from JCAHO that they may be there any day. Start taking the steps now to achieve these goals.

2.       Identify a strategic third-party partner to help you evaluate the situation.

• Technology is playing a bigger and bigger role in meeting the requirements. Working with a systems integrator like Dynamic can help you identify solutions that meet your needs, within your budget, and can work together to achieve interoperability.

3.       Identify where your strengths and weaknesses are.

• Do a complete site survey. Not everything can be fixed at once and this will help identify what areas need to have the most focus and what areas are working well already.

4.       Evaluate what changes will work for your hospital’s culture.

•  No matter what solutions you implement, if it does not align with your organization’s culture, it will not be adopted. For example, as part of Dynamic’s site survey process, we observe how the staff interacts, where they go to do certain tasks, among other indicators, to help us identify what RFID and RTLS solutions would be appropriate.

5.       Implement changes in phases.

• Dynamic never recommends rolling out a technology solution enterprise-wide. Integrate the solution in the area that needs it most and evaluate the pros and cons so that the solution can be perfected before it is deployed throughout the organization.

In a video posted on the Healthcare IT News Web site a registered nurse working at the Eastern Maine Medical Center describes her experience working in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and how EMRs have affected the productivity of the Medical Center. In the video she discusses how EMRs have improved the efficiency of providing care, especially in the ICU, serving as a fast way to obtain a patient’s medical history and that they have facilitated speedier data entry. Soon, this will become a reality for hospitals and healthcare providers of all sizes.

The video demonstrates a firsthand, practical account regarding how technology (i.e. EMRs) is empowering healthcare professionals with the support to do their jobs better. She describes how EMRs allow the medical staff to prepare for patients before they arrive via information from other hospitals, allows them to quickly view their medical history and to easily update and share the information. Beyond creating efficiencies, EMRs also help eliminate errors in delivery of medication. The RN specifically addresses the usefulness of having the information about medications right on the EMR so they can easily identify what the medication is, what it is used for and what it looks like.

While EMRs are helping to aim the industry in the right direction, they alone do not create a truly connected healthcare model. The healthcare industry, especially the ICU, is a very fast paced environment with multiple steps/checkpoints that are conductive to human error. When implementing RFID into the model, these processes are dramatically mitigated and many types of errors and risks can be eliminated altogether. The combination of these factors optimizes the health care environment for patient safety and staff efficiency.

RFID, specifically, addresses these factors and has virtually limitless applications once the infrastructure is in place. Automating many of these steps greatly reduces the opportunity for medical error through the correct identification of patients and staff, real-time transparency across the continuum of care, real-time location and maintenance management of assets and inventory. Here are some of the ways implementing RFID can create interoperability and its role in creating a truly connected healthcare model.

·         Improve the accuracy of patient identification: RFID wrist bands, handheld readers accurately identify patients every time (patient & staff tracking).

·         Improve the effectiveness of communication among caregivers: RFID makes real-time changes in EMRs accessible to all caregivers, facilitating the accurate and effective communication of key details (patient & staff tracking, lab & sample tracking, medication tracking).

·         Improve the safety of using medications: RFID ensures the right dosage of the right medication is given to the right person at the right time. It can prevent dangerous interactions and associate the caregiver who prescribes/ administers the drugs with the patient in the EHR (patient & staff tracking, medication tracking, inventory management).

·         Accurately and completely reconcile medications across the continuum of care: EHR via RFID provides real-time, accurate and complete information across the continuum of care (patient & staff tracking, medication tracking, lab & sample tracking).

·         Reduce the risk of patient harm resulting from falls: RFID Patient tracking can notify appropriate personnel when patients who are at high risk for falls get out of their beds/ rooms, allowing them to respond immediately and restore the patient to safe conditions. (patient tracking)

·         Improve recognition and response to changes in a patient’s condition: RFID can enable teams to quickly recognize, locate and reach a patient with the appropriate tools and medications to respond to their condition changes (patient & staff tracking, inventory management, asset tracking & maintenance, medication tracking).

It is when EMRs and other HIT are implemented to work together that the truly connected healthcare model will be achieved. Although the definition of meaningful use is continuing to change, we know that by reducing costs, minimizing risks and improving patient care, meaningful use is being achieved through this model.

There is no progress without change, but for the most part, people and institutions resist it. Change plays upon the fear of the unknown, evoking emotions of uncertainty and defensiveness in even the most seasoned, confident professional. Throw a new technology into the mix like an RFID or RTLS solution, and there’s the added risk that end-users will dismiss the solution as cumbersome before even putting it to practical use.

With health care applications, the real risk lies in process, not the technology. The process by which a new technology is introduced, evangelized and adopted within a health care organization can determine not only the fate of the technology acceptance, but the overall advancement of the organization.  Accelerating the pace at which new solutions and ideas about health care are spread throughout the system should be a priority, as these challenges to the status quo can significantly reduce costs, minimize risks and improve patient care and satisfaction.

Despite this change imperative, new technology initiatives often fail due to lack of preparedness for cultural change. Disgruntled staff can hinder successful integration of new technology into any organization – it should come as no surprise, then, that RFID adoption in the health care environment is no exception.

While RFID has been proven to streamline information processing and eliminate human error, its implementation is in danger of being a failure, or at the very least a sketchy venture, if the end-users are not on board. So, is ‘on-boarding’ as simple as a series of IT-hosted training sessions and a leave-behind manual? Not if you want individuals across the system to truly commit to and connect with the technology.

In The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling book about ‘moments of critical mass,’ the author observes, “Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do.” And so the concept of technology diffusion – sometimes also called evangelism or advocacy – goes. Simply put, diffusion of innovation is the process by which a new product, service or idea is communicated throughout an organization.  Depending upon the size of your organization, it may be one or a handful of select user evangelists (engaged physicians, devoted nurses, front-line administration) who serve as early adopters of a new technology – for example, an RFID asset tracking solution – and then vouch for its ease of use and effectiveness to peers.  Often times, the day-to-day user serves the IT advocate role more effectively than the IT professional or high-level administrator proper because they can anticipate colleague questions and issues.

If done wisely, technology adoption is one of the more egalitarian processes a health care system will undertake. Traditional hierarchies and bureaucracies within the organization go out the window, because an entire user group must be included in the process in order for it thrive. Still, harnessing the interest and influence of key internal staff to use the technology and share anecdotal evidence of its benefit is a critical step in managing technology or process change in the health care setting.

Facilitating the stages and addressing the issues that arise at each stage is useful to introduce RFID into health care facilities with the best possible results. The stages are as follows:

·         Initiation: Introduction of the technology

·         Fascination: Seeing the benefits of integrating the technology

·         Disenchantment: Annoyance of and resistance to the changes

·         Mental Isolation: Wishing to return to the familiar system

·         Adjustment and recovery: Acceptance of the new system

At Dynamic we leverage an offering we call our Change Management Support (CMS) offering, which addresses each stage and incorporates them in the implementation of RFID into health care environments. By facilitating informational workshops, we establish the groundwork for a successful undertaking and can help organizations identify internal champions of technology initiatives.

Pairing together our RFID solutions for health care with our Change Management Support we help facilitate education, communication and transparency throughout the RFID adoption process. Our scalable RFID solutions improve patient care, reduce costs, minimize risks and are interoperable with your existing systems.