Photo by Christa Dodoo on Unsplash
When talking about the patient journey, we think about the process an individual goes through when they seek health care and work to resolve their health issues. It's also about understanding the impact on others involved in helping the patient navigate the system. Where are the opportunities to improve? And how can we prevent harm to patients during their journey?
The *ECRI Institute’s list of ‘Top Patient Safety Concerns in 2019’ provides more context to the journey in relation to potentially negative outcomes. Top threats to patient safety include healthcare provider burnout, antimicrobial stewardship, infections with peripherally inserted IV lines, early sepsis recognition and problems with standardising safety efforts across health systems.
In conjunction with hospital quality managers, infection prevention control teams are uniquely positioned to accomplish performance improvement aimed at reducing HAIs (in addition to wider quality improvement and patient safety issues.) With the right tools, these teams can harness the knowledge, skills, and experience of contributing individuals to make lasting improvements.
There is a better way
Digital audits, automated action plans and task management, mobile incident reporting, and easy-to-understand insight dashboards are just some of the tools that innovative hospitals are actively investing in today as part of their strategic quality improvement initiatives.
Hospitals now have the ability to arm already overstretched staff at risk of burnout with more efficient technology solutions; tipping the balance from admin overwhelm back to towards patient care and a quality-focused culture to be proud of.
Using technology to digitise and automate workflows, prioritise ‘care time’, and gain a real-time understanding of a hospital's quality and compliance performance is game-changing - not only for tomorrow's patient journey but also the wellbeing of today's healthcare professional.
[This article first appeared in the IPCI Annual Newsletter, May ‘19]
*ECRI Institute is an independent nonprofit authority on the medical practices and products that provide the safest, most cost-effective care.