Hospitals and health systems are sharing more patient information at more points of care than ever before. From nursing notes to financial data to medication and supply inventory, clinicians now store and share information at every conceivable point along a patient's journey. At the same time, health reform is forcing providers to share many of these disparate pieces of information outside the four walls of a hospital. Federal interoperability requirements are making the ability to exchange information between separate health IT systems vital for any hospital's success — especially those that maintain larger networks with a variety of points of care, such as walk-in clinics and long-term care facilities.
In order to achieve their interoperability and efficiency goals, hospitals and health systems must partner with enterprise vendors that operate on a single database infrastructure. A single database decreases the quantity of information managed and saves clinicians time spent on repeated data entry, ultimately improving workflow efficiencies and patient care. A single database also minimizes system maintenance and IT involvement, and centralizes updates to patient information.
Storing all similar information in one place throughout a hospital's departments may seem like an obvious benchmark for achieving interoperability, but only a handful of health IT systems currently operate using this approach. This will likely shift as care coordination demands clinician workflow to be more streamlined.
Hospitals and health systems have much to gain from working with enterprise vendors that offer a unified approach. In talking with customers and potential clients, we are consistently hearing the following top four benefits cited by health systems who partner with vendors who offer a single database strategy.
Benefit #1: Better clinician workflow management
When databases are not shared between hospital departments, patient information has to be reentered numerous times — upon admission, in the operating room, the hospital pharmacy and again during follow-up appointments outside the hospital setting. This is a huge waste of clinician time. A single platform solution resolves this problem by allowing the same information to be keyed in once, with access for all providers across the continuum of care. Clinicians are not burdened by entering the same data that their colleague in another department has already submitted because they can pull that data up with just a few clicks from wherever they may be working.
Benefit #2: Unburdening IT staff
As information technology's impact on healthcare grows, hospital IT staff is busier than ever. A single database reduces their workload significantly. With less information to monitor and fewer data-entry errors to fix, IT staff can focus their attention elsewhere. A less stressed IT staff means more time for implementing new technologies or advancing existing technologies to improve care.
Benefit #3: Improved patient safety and care coordination
When data is keyed in several times by numerous clinicians and administrators, the risk of error rises exponentially. Making information accessible across multiple departments, and even beyond the acute care setting, improves the consistency and quality of patient care. Patients spend less time filling out paperwork or answering repeat questions and can instead trust that all of their providers have access to their full information. And since a single database helps to manage clinician workflow, patient experience improves as caregivers spend less time typing in data and more time with their patients.
A single database helps improve care coordination beyond the immediate face-to-face patient experience. Other important details like caregiver information, medication and supply usage all tie to care coordination and can be more easily tracked and shared with a single database in place. As the number of accountable care organizations is expected to more than double over the next two years , finding solutions to empower clinicians to more easily share information and communicate across the care continuum becomes a critical success factor.
Benefit #4: Long-term financial improvements
Easier access to data through a single platform directly supports the financial health of hospitals and health systems. When providers select solutions from vendors that enable data access throughout their hospital departments and beyond, the entire hospital can operate in a more streamlined fashion. This holds true for not only the data management but ultimately for the financial management of the systems, people and processes that are leveraging this single database. Imagine a scenario where personnel or cost data across a system on a single database is concise with less need for costly interfaces or manual processes to report on the financials.
Conclusion
In order for hospitals and health systems to function as unified organizations, they must be able to access cohesive data. When shopping for new health IT solutions, healthcare executives should look for products that decrease the risk of human error and save their clinicians as much time as possible.
Partnering with vendors that can link as many functions of as many departments as possible into a single database makes providing optimal, well-coordinated care for patients more feasible. As the industry is increasingly tasked with delivering accountable care across geographies and disparate clinics or locations, the ability to quickly and effectively share information will be the only way to provide a comprehensive client experience.
Kristin Russel is senior director product development and marketing at Omnicell, maker of the Omnicell G4 Unity platform. Facilitated by a physical or virtual server, this cohesive system of medication, controlled substance and supply dispensing technology connects to a single medication database.