EL SEGUNDO, CA – A new report says hospitals have yet to fully implement existing technologies that can help them deploy more efficient care strategies.
Hospitals are under reimbursement pressure from payers and facing worker shortages and are likely to turn to these technologies to try and cope with these pressures, according to a report from First Consulting Group, which recently was acquired by CSC Corp.
Improving efficiency is one of the only realistic ways of overcoming these challenges, said Fran Turisco, research director for CSC.
While the technology is available today to improve efficiency, hospitals are at various stages at accepting and implementing these tools, Turisco said.
“Hospitals don’t think twice about using kiosks in an emergency department or ambulatory care setting,” she said. “Asset tracking is a little less mature. There are a lot of different options, and vendors and hospitals are trying to figure out what technologies work best.”
Using kiosks to streamline the check-in process can free providers from tedious tasks, while asset tracking can reduce the time needed to find medical equipment, while reducing the number of expensive devices that hospitals need to purchase to meet their needs.
The report says technologies can be classified into three general areas that could increase efficiency:
• Those which eliminate work tasks, such as the manual collection of data for subsequent input into clinical information systems;
• Those which improve operational efficiency, such as patient or asset tracking;
• And those which transform existing manual tasks to a more automated form, such as using kiosks at admission.
Few hospitals are using what Turisco calls event management or integration engine software, which could help front-line caregivers respond to requests for assistance or information as it comes in during the workday.
These technologies and their integration can help clinicians deal with interrruptions and facilitate the transfer of information between onsite and offsite providers, the report said. “Technology can now provide ‘the glue’ to link people, events and information,” it contends, similar to the way interface engines enables communication between different software applications.
“A number of our clients are building new buildings, and they are thinking about what is the right infrastructure to have in place when the building opens,” she said. “It’s a great opportunity to ask how we would want the technology to support the care environment.”