Northwestern Ontario covers a geographic area the size of France, but is sparsely populated, with only about 230,000 residents.
PROBLEM
Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Center (TBRHSC) staff know that with limited medical resources across Northwestern Ontario, it is important that they work together across all hospitals providing surgical services to improve access to care for patients in remote and rural areas.
PROPOSE
Cindy Fedell, CIO at TBHSC. “Providing tools to support patients is fundamental to our vision.
“We have begun rolling out asynchronous video technology for surgery across four hospitals within TBHSC’s Regional Surgical Services program,” she continued. “The overarching goal is to optimize clinical staff time while improving patient compliance, experience and outcomes.”
The key challenges facing service delivery organizations, Fedell outlined, are:
- Optimize clinical staff time for limited resources
- A long pre-anesthesia appointment hinders getting the patient into an empty operating room
- Failure to standardize preoperative teaching may reduce quality assurance
- Patient non-compliance with pre-operative teaching leads to failure to attend pre-anesthesia appointments, cancellation of surgery due to non-compliance, patients not understanding the importance of ambulation and discharge on the same day, etc.
“In surgical care, there is a lot of information that needs to be communicated to patients and caregivers before surgery,” Fedell explains. “It’s important that patients not only understand the information but also remember it and then take appropriate action.
“While we have invested in an app to provide this information to patients in text format, most pre-operative information is provided by doctors, nurses and staff,” she continued. issued verbally, in addition to a paper package. “Verbal repetition is extremely time-consuming for our clinical staff. On average, it takes an hour during the pre-anesthesia appointment to convey redundant information.”
These lengthy appointments act as bottlenecks in getting patients into the operating room. In addition, patients often forget information they heard and call to ask, and staff will repeat that information.
Asynchronous video technology made sense for the organization, and the organization chose the provider HCT Digital Care.
“Staff repeat, relay information before surgery and then answer the same questions when they inevitably arrive,” Fedell said. “If we put it all on asynchronous video, they don’t have to keep giving the same information.
“And the messaging is scripted and standardized, which is great from a quality assurance standpoint,” she added. “Patients can review the video as often as needed, at home with caregivers and family, in the language they speak at home.”
The technology’s capabilities were also attractive to Fedell because the videos are interactive and have built-in surveys and analytics.
“So we can encourage patients to take action, such as downloading our digital patient engagement and monitoring tool from SeaMD,” she commented. “And with surveys, we can do digital walkthroughs to make sure patients understand what they just heard. We can also get experience data back from patients.
“Then with video analytics, we can actually look at the data to make sure that our patients are actually watching and interacting with the video content,” she continued. “And HCT are healthcare operations experts. They understand us and what we’re trying to do.”
MEETING THE CHALLENGE
TBHSC has automated pre-operative messaging for all surgeries across surgical hospitals in Northwestern Ontario. It starts with 10 videos that cover a variety of topics, including scheduling and consenting for surgery, downloading the app, what to expect during your pre-anesthesia appointment, general pre-surgery instructions, What to expect from OP and IP surgery, common misconceptions, what to expect after surgery, and how to prepare patients to go home.
The videos are embedded on the organization’s website and in the SeamMD app.
“HCT helped us build our clinical workflow, using QR codes to promote videos and communicate internally with all of our clinicians and staff about debut”. “Now we’re streaming live videos, we’re meeting regularly and reviewing analytics reports so we see the impact we’re having on our patients.
“The vendor’s project management and guidance has really had an impact on our leadership team,” she added.
RESULT
To date, patients have watched more than 250 hours of video.
“It’s incredible when you think about how much time we’ve saved for our clinical staff,” Fedell said. “But beyond that, it’s time to take the time to enhance the surgical experience for patients and their families.”
There have been more than 9,500 video views, which means TBHSC has standardized preoperative communication for thousands of surgeries. That’s a big quality assurance benefit.
“Another statistic we know from analytics is that 99% of patients found the video helpful and felt better prepared for surgery after they watched the video,” Fedell reports. “It was an A+ for patient experience. Through analytics, we were able to see how patients commented on how educational and informative the videos were, answered their questions, calm their anxiety and clarify their expectations.
“A truly astonishing statistic: We reduced incoming patient inquiries by a factor of 15 to 1,” she continued. “For every 15 questions that nurses once received from patients calling or writing before surgery, they now receive one. That means we are proactively answering their questions.” patients using video technology and make better use of nurse and staff time.”
ADVICE TO OTHERS
Fedell says this is the future of care delivery.
“Patients already use video in their daily lives and often watch YouTube videos when trying to navigate care,” she said. “We want patients to get information from us, their trusted provider, in the best format for learning and retention. And asynchronous video technology is how you can reach patients patients in the format they like to enhance the care we provide. That’s a win.” -win-win.
“Our administrators love it because it helps them achieve their business and operational goals,” concludes Fedell. “Our clinicians and staff love it because they don’t want to repeat themselves verbally 24/7 and they want their patients to be better prepared and engaged. And I want to thank Caroline Fanti, our regional director of surgical services, for leading us.” responsibility for these efforts at our organization.”
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