It is estimated that today, roughly one third of all healthcare spending is wasteful, providing no benefit to patients -- and that wasted money amounts to a humbling $1 Trillion. Further, studies show that hospitals waste $12 Billion per year on poor communication.
With increasing numbers of big name hospitals reporting decreases in operating margins, this is an alarming trend. But where is all of this money going?
I want to discuss a story that at first might seem an unusual and even confusing topic for a Pulsara blog post, and I want to start out with a disclaimer that this post isn't about religion. I'll use the ancient story of the Tower of Babel from the Bible to illustrate my point, but hopefully all readers will be able to glean value from my words regardless of views, beliefs, or religion.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Special thanks to Justin Baker for writing today's blog post. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.
A common problem that I have found in healthcare is that many people in this field have a strong tendency to choose the most inexpensive solution, even when it's at the detriment of productivity or outcomes. Even as solutions like Pulsara continue to demonstrate advancements and progress, we also continue to run into road blocks because of this mindset. When having discussions with hospital leadership members, we hear the same responses continuously: “This is a great product and would be very beneficial, but we don’t have the funding for it.” Or: “The current solution that we are using doesn’t cost us a thing. The two main transferring hospitals pay for it, so why would we want to pay for a product?”
These outlying facilities definitely see the benefit in the product, but ultimately not enough to put in the work to find a way to include it in the budget. There is documented proof that eighty percent of serious medical errors involve miscommunication between caregivers during transition of care. So why as an industry do we continue to choose the cheap way out of things when that means using solutions that contribute to this problem rather than addressing it?
According to a recent article published in Forbes, "The move to population health and away from fee-for-service medicine is working to the detriment of U.S. hospitals, a new report from Fitch Ratings indicates.
It's a fact: poor communication contributes to 80% of medical errors, over 33% of all malpractice suits, poor patient outcomes and redundant costs.
As a patient transitions through the healthcare system, the hand off between healthcare teams puts them at great risk. To make matters worse, current technology solutions isolate patient care teams in communication silos, further contributing to this breakdown.
How do you connect pre-hospital and inter-facility specialists with your intra-facility teams?
EDITOR'S NOTE: Last week, EMS1, Fitch & Associates, and the National EMS Management Association released their third annual EMS Trend Report, proudly sponsored by Pulsara. Because the articles and advice found within contain such critical subject matter, we've elected to publish each segment one at a time here on our blog. Read, enjoy, share, and take to heart the following information brought to you by the most prestigious thought leaders in EMS.
About the authors: Jay Fitch, PhD, is a founding partner of Fitch & Associates, and has spent more than four decades serving the EMS community as a leader, author, speaker, educator and consultant. Guillermo Fuentes, MBA, is the Fitch & Associates partner specializing in communications and technology. He previously served in operations and leadership roles in public safety in Montreal and the Niagara region of Ontario.
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EMS is at a critical juncture in its maturation, and it is the perception and attitude of those who work in the industry that will impact the future. Culture change can only happen if leaders recognize it’s needed, and the profession takes concerted efforts to make it happen.
A few weeks ago, we published a blog introducing the concept of the Internet of Lifesaving People, where we discussed the importance of arming our healthcare teams with the right tools to empower them -- the clinicians -- to deliver optimal care through integrated, precise communication. This week, we wanted to explain how Pulsara fits into this concept.
Pulsara’s purpose is to improve the lives of patients and caregivers through innovative communication. We’ve helped create the Internet of Lifesaving People, which has been used to help coordinate regional care teams for thousands and thousands of patients across the United States and Australia.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Special thanks to Greg Brown, MN, RN, for writing today's blog post. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.
Last week, I introduced the first of three main obstacles I've identified in my time as a Charge Nurse: "Lack of Staffing Resources for the ED." If you missed it, you should really check out part 1 here to get some context.
In this series, I'm discussing not only the challenges Charge Nurses face in our roles, but also the importance of maintaining a positive outlook in efforts to best keep up the morale of the rest of our teams. This next issue can be particularly difficult to tackle with a calm face, especially since it's all about the well-being of our patients. But, taking a second to breathe can help maintain relationships and ensure better outcomes for everyone involved.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Special thanks to Greg Brown, MN, RN, for writing today's blog post. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.
It’s no secret that Emergency Department nurses wear many hats, but as Charge Nurses we have additional demands beyond those of our colleagues. When walking into the charge role, we are gifted not only with the responsibility, but also the privilege to lead a staff for the next 12 hours.
No matter what happens over those 12 hours, there are always two outcomes: The shift will get better, or it will end. I, for one, relish the challenge of being a charge nurse in a busy ED. I get to flex my problem solving, prioritizing, and critical thinking skills in a broader scope that affects my organization as a whole entity.
That being said, when things start to go sideways, the challenge can become overwhelming and exhausting, and the only thing we can do is to make the best decisions we can at that moment. Sometimes we win, and sometimes we fall on our faces. But that is the beauty of leading an ED. We are surrounded by allies, who all rally behind each other and pick each other up. Our successes and failures are shared, and as a Charge Nurse, we get to lead, well … the charge!
The next time you’re feeling under the weather on a flight, you might take comfort in knowing that the world’s first airport emergency room opened last week at the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport.
While the airport already has a pharmacy and an urgent care, those facilities are meant more for minor ailments, whereas the new freestanding ER will serve patients with more serious conditions like chest pain.
What is loss aversion and how does it impact us in healthcare?
In cognitive psychology and decision theory, loss aversion refers to people's tendency to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring similar gains: it is better to avoid losing $5 than it is to find or gain $5.
The loss aversion mindset is widespread in healthcare, and it makes sense. I've noticed as I've met with customers that they are in love with the process that they've worked so hard to create. I know because I've been there! You put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into making things work and work well.
To make matters worse, you put in all of this hard work when things were a mess. When starting a program like STEMI, Stroke or Trauma, the whole idea is to bring order out of chaos. Your job is to provide some level of predictability in an environment that is unpredictable in nature. You've likely lived through those tumultuous times and, more than anything, you just don't want to go back.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Special thanks to Justin Baker for writing today's blog post. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.
Having been in EMS now for 19 years, I have noticed one thing among the medical community: some medical providers are very interested in advancements in technology and improvements in patient care outcomes, but only as long as it does not require them to change or increase their workload.
As technology has continued to evolve, I hear “Wow, that is great, but it is just another thing for me to do.” or “I already have too much.” Even if it is the best thing for the patient, you will still typically hear the staff concerns.
The more reluctant members of the medical team tend to bring up roadblocks for why their teams can't do things a certain way, or why changing technologies will not work for them. For example, when working to implement Pulsara in our region, we hear concerns about how it's just one more tablet and application to have to use, despite the fact that statistics show that Pulsara decreases time significantly and ultimately improves the patient outcome.
This week (May 6 - 12) marks the annual National Nurses Week, which takes place on Florence Nightingale’s birthday week. This year’s theme is “Nurses: Inspire, Innovate, Influence.”
No where does this theme hold more true than at Pulsara.
We are lucky enough to have seven nurses on our staff. Some have been with us since the beginning of the company. Others joined only this past year. But all of them inspire us to continue making the Pulsara platform better and easier to use, they innovate with new ideas for helping others in healthcare, and they influence the rest of the team with their spirit, intelligence, grit, and servant leadership.
Medical errors in healthcare kill about 400,000 people per year secondary to medical error.
On top of that, you have 10,000 serious medical complications every single day, which affects 1 in 5 Americans.
And, 80% of these medical errors are due to miscommunication.
According to Dr. James Woodson, Founder and CEO of Pulsara, these facts are what drove him to transition from practicing medicine full time to focusing on making the Pulsara platform a reality.
"A lot of our staff still use pagers," Dr. Woodson said in a new podcast episode hosted by Medic2Medic. "But 50% of all pages go to the wrong person in acute scenarios. That's a massive source of miscommunication that causes complications and delays. And, in many places in the U.S. we don't have systems in place to remedy in real time when those call lists are wrong."
[NOTE: Pulsara recently spent at day at the FirstNet Innovation Lab in Boulder Colorado where Pulsara is now installed. The Lab is a centralized location to showcase the capabilities of FirstNet. Pulsara is collaborating with FirstNet to showcase the importance of real-time team communications that crosses healthcare entities. Thank you @FirstNet for your hospitality. — Shawn Olson & Brandon Means]
Why is innovation in healthcare so slow?
"Despite their stated enthusiasm, hospitals have been notoriously slow to adopt digital innovations. Explanations include their IT departments already have their hands full installing, maintaining, and upgrading electronic health record (EHR) systems. But much of the blame can be attributed to hospitals’ misaligned budgeting and incentive systems."
A recent article from Harvard Business Review shows how our hospital budget systems are holding back innovation and gives suggestions for how we can address the problems. Specifically, the article mentions three barriers hospitals have to adopting new technology.
I recently heard a story about a STEMI patient that really drove home the magnitude of healthcare's communication problem. In this case, a member of the care team had administered a medication, and in the haste of the emergency, this critical piece of information was missed by other members of the care team. Can you predict what happened next? Yep. Another clinician administered the exact same dose again moment later. Luckily, the error wasn't life threatening, but it easily could have been.
Thirty minutes or less used to be standard for food delivery. Meanwhile, in other regions of the world, some remote villages would have to wait hours for the medications and blood needed to save lives. Fast forward to today, and -- thanks to the rising demand for delivery as well as urban sprawl -- the food delivery standard has grown to around an hour. But, the same trend has not followed medical supply delivery thanks to a startup called Zipline, which can now deliver life-saving blood, snake anti-venom, and medications to remote locations in a matter of minutes.
For being a society that wants everything instantly, medicine is taking its time. Think about it … while we have made leaps and bounds in medical best practices and procedures over the last 3 decades, communication around time sensitive emergencies is still stuck in the 1970s. Need to relay a message to 10 members of the care team? Better make 10 separate phone calls.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Special thanks to our guest blogger, Bob Sullivan. Bob Sullivan, MS, NRP, is a paramedic instructor at Delaware Technical Community College. He has been in EMS since 1999, and has worked as a paramedic in private, fire-based, volunteer, and municipal EMS services, and is an ally to Pulsara. Contact info for Bob can be found on his blog, The EMS Patient Perspective. This post originally appeared on EMS1.com. Enjoy!
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A regional, multidisciplinary team approach to time-critical injuries and illnesses is proven to save lives. EMS plays an important role in transporting patients to the most appropriate facility and alerting in-hospital teams before arrival. Here are 10 things you need to know about systems of care and team activation:
