The UNMH Smartphone and Patient Care App
Patient care at UNMH, and all over the country for that matter, is riddled with gross inefficiencies and inadequacies that could be in large manner corrected with the implementation of modern technology. I will enumerate a number of scenarios that arise regularly.
1)clinically significant lab and radiological results do not come to the attention of the primary physician in a timely.
2)changes in patient vital signs are not promptly reported to physicians.
3)communication networks between physicians and ancillary staff are inadequate. It is often impossible to communicate with of a patient’s nurse in a timely fashion.
To streamline patient care I propose the development of a UNMH patient care smartphone as well as a Patient Care App that will replace the pager/paging system and powerchart, respectively.
UNMH SMARTPHONE
· Each resident will be issued a dedicated UNMH smartphone that comes with the patient care app pre-installed, along with loads of other relevant software including med-calc, epocrates, etc.
o The phone have contacts pre-installed, and updated regularly, which includes all the information available on amion plus cell phone, text message capability. The contacts will be grouped/categorized to allow for instant access to different departments.
o There will be programmable templates for each residency department and each rotation that include a favorites list with relevant contacts.
o The UNMH smartphone will be designed, or at least encouraged, to be work exclusive so that it won’t receive personal or extracurricular text messages, facebook messages etc. in other words it should be a pager replacement rather than a personal phone replacement.
UNMH PATIENT CARE APP
· The app will have technology analogous to the facebook app.
o Instead of ‘friends’ there will be a ‘patient list’, accessible at the click of a button.
o All patient locations, brief demographic summary, med list, mar, vitals, level of activity, diet, labs, rad data will be accessible from each patient’s page
o Relevant nurse messages, lab updates, consultant notes, and critical vitals will pop up as notifications associated with each patient
o ‘text’ Messages can be sent to relevant consultants, nurses, PT/OT, or directly to patients through the app.
· Order’s can be placed directly through the app, including some simplifying order sets such as:
o A simple checkbox can be clicked for each patient (that needs them) to receive am labs.
o A page with common order changes, like level of activity, diet, level of care, which could all be changed by the click of a button.
· Reminders for each patient will be programmed into the app including:
o Whether am labs have been ordered
o Whether DVT prophylaxis has been ordered,
o Level of activity- in case it needs changing
o Diet- in case it needs changing.
· The app will have a program based equivalent on each computer in the hospital
How to implement
· Issue a smartphone to each resident in all programs at the start of residency
o Obtain funding (????)
o The UNMH smartphone will REPLACE the pagers/paging system
· The hospital will be equipped with numerous smartphone charging ports throughout to allow for easy access to charging
· In order to implement the app, Cerner/powerchart will need to be fired, and replaced with a corporation more responsive to our needs and to rapid turnover of troubleshooting solutions that allow for seamless integration of a computer based CPOE and the mobile patient care app equivalent.