COVID-19 continues to impact the daily lives of people across the nation. As this surge continues, TeleTracking’s commitment to our mission is more important than ever. Transparency and visibility are essential in order to identify COVID-19 patients, where they have been, and who they have been in contact with to ensure the safety of staff and other patients.
As a way to help, TeleTracking introduced Office Hours—regularly scheduled times that provide health systems with access to the expertise of our clinical and operational teams. A recent session kicked off with a review of the Centers for Disease Control four key goals for the U.S. healthcare system.
1. Preserve healthcare system functioning
Tips from Maria Romano, Clinical Advisor, TeleTracking
- Create a rapid response capacity team NOW, before the full wave of COVID-19 patients hits.
- Discharging patient by 11AM has always been challenging. However, now is the time, with the support of a rapid response team, to achieve that milestone and free up excess capacity. Reports available through TeleTracking make it possible to see exactly where capacity is across all units.
- The rapid response team also can and should also be collaborating with the patient flow committee. They can help with getting the patients who don’t need higher levels of care, such as a ventilator, out of the ICUs to free up beds for the patients who do.
- While you still have time, build your surge beds now. For example, TeleTracking just helped one healthcare system build 3,500 surge beds. Another system had to discharge and transport stable COVID-19 positive patients to a Days Inn that was converted to a hospital.
- Develop workflows for COVID-19 patients now too. Alignment of attributes are an imperative in order to run reports to determine where COVID-19 patients are in the system.
Tips from Lee Wallace, Outcomes Consultant, TeleTracking
- Patient attributes help preserve health system functioning by giving caregivers the information they need to protect themselves and effectively move patients across the care continuum. TeleTracking Technical Support can help you configure these attributes. The team is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and can be reached by calling: US: 1-877-570-6903 or UK: +44 1722 241030. For example, we’re using PA and COVID-19 for persons under investigation [PUIs] and confirmed cases, which means through PatientTracking Portal, you can see every patient who is suspected, confirmed, or is being tested for COVID-19. We can also help set up attributes in the system following departure of a COVID-19 patient to indicate when it’s safe for cleaning.
- If you have SynapseIQ Enterprise, a COVID-19 dashboard is available. The dashboard was released to TeleTracking SynapseIQ customers on April 1, 2020 and is also available to hospitals currently using TeleTracking Capacity Management Suite version 3.4 or greater. For more information contact us at info@teletracking.com.
2. Protect healthcare personnel
Tips from Maria Romano, Clinical Advisor, TeleTracking
- By using the correct patient attributes, healthcare personnel can be sure they’re using the right level of personal protective equipment. It’s then possible to run a report in real-time in order to identify all isolation patients―which the rapid response capacity team can monitor to make sure patients are placed most appropriately. Aligning bed and patient attributes is another way to protect healthcare personnel. For example, in Brooklyn, there are 17 healthcare workers who were in touch with a COVID-19 patient and are now quarantined.
3. Minimize disease transmission
Tips from Jim Branka, Outcomes Consultant, TeleTracking
- It’s important to make sure the patient and bed attributes are applied―and the COVID-19 positive attributes are on. For example, EVS workers are not supposed to go into rooms right after a COVID-19 patient is discharged. TeleTracking makes it possible to notify the teams regarding these vacant/blocked rooms and delay the rooms in the EVS workflow so the teams don’t go into the rooms. When EVS does go in with a UV light to clean, the workflow also includes another step in the process that accounts for the air exchanges in the room.
4. Reducing the morbidity and mortality rates
Tips from Maria Romano, Clinical Advisor, TeleTracking
- Precision patient placement is essential—a patient must be at the right level of care, at the right time, the first time. Having a centralized command center for placement makes it possible to place the right patients with the right staff.
- We also want to get patients correctly placed quickly―because we know that for patients coming in through the emergency department the longer they board, the higher the chance of infection and an increased rate of morbidity. Using TeleTracking, it’s possible to assign attributes and align the patient with right room.
Health Systems Sharing Additional COVID-19 Tactics
Systems Support Analyst, Baycare Health:
We built a COVID-19 code that we’re using to block beds so we can have negative air flow beds designated in certain areas of the hospitals. We also created two new isolation codes to track COVID-19 patients so we can do our daily reporting to the state of Florida.
Patient Flow Manager, McLeod Regional Medical Center:
We’ve been using our console to cohort patients. We’ve combined the 10th and 11th floors, which are typically ortho and general surgery patients, into one unit for acute patients to rule out COVID-19. This helps with staffing and ensuring that staff use the correct PPE. It’s also helped the physicians taking care of patients because they can run a report every morning before they make assignments. Food tray delivery is using the reports too. It’s made a huge impact in a short time.
TeleTracking is here to help. If you are currently a client, reach out to your Client Success Manager, Health System Director or call TeleTracking Technical Support, 877-570-6903, and we can quickly assign resources.
If you’re not a current client and would like more information about our solutions, please email us at info@teletracking.com.