Automating Documentation and Improving Patient Safety with Data Capture
Home health patients want the best possible care and ample time with caregivers, and home health workers and agencies want to deliver on those needs while ensuring patient safety at every step. But manual processes, inefficiency, and a mountain of documentation and compliance requirements often get in the way.
Home health workers are constantly burdened with the need to document all the care they deliver, and often this means they have to spend extra time at the end of visits or at the end of the day, filling out paperwork and managing documentation. Frequently this also requires overtime hours, adding to the difficulty of their job and to costs for the agency.
When home health workers are overworked and burned out, it creates greater risk of a mistake or medical error, which could create serious harm for the patient and could be catastrophic for the agency in terms of liability. But burnout and overwork also lead to employee stress and frustration, which can cause them to leave their job in favor of another employer.
When paper-based and inefficient processes make it harder to track, verify and document the correct medications, treatment, specimen collection, blood management, and medical devices, it increases the risks of medical issues and departures.
This is why it’s so important for home health organizations to digitize and automate their documentation and patient safety procedures with data capture technologies.
By automating data capture to digitize, error-proof and streamline patient care and documentation, home health agencies can significantly improve efficiency and time spent with patients while minimizing errors and patient safety risks. Instead of manually identifying and tracking patients, specimens, medications, blood bags, or medical devices, an automated system with the right tools digitizes these processes for better efficiency, accuracy and safety.
You can also replace time-consuming and cumbersome paperwork with seamless digital workflows that allow home health workers to document care and ensure compliance on the spot, at the point of care, without spending endless extra hours or overtime on the task.
For example, many home health organizations are creating completely digital operations by integrating barcode labeling, scanners, mobile computing and tracking throughout their operations.
Here’s a quick breakdown of how a typical automated data capture system works:
• At the start of a home health visit, using healthcare-grade mobile computers or tablets, home health workers identify patients and match them with electronic medical records (EMR), care plans, medications, and more.
• Medications, specimens, blood samples, blood bags, medical devices, and other items related to the patient’s care are labeled and tracked using Zebra mobile or compact desktop printers, labels and supplies.
• Clinicians then use mobile computers or tablets to scan labels, identify items, and automatically match them to the right patient by transmitting collected data to their EMR or other systems.
• As care is delivered, the same automated data capture and transmission can document each step, validating correct care, medication administration, specimen collection, and other tasks. Home health workers use mobile devices to share data with an EMR or other system to automatically document and track everything they do for safety and compliance, and it all happens with paperless, digital accuracy and efficiency.
This fully digitized and automated approach replaces manual and paper-based processes that are slower, more cumbersome, and prone to error. In the end, it creates safer patient care and maximizes positive healthcare outcomes by enabling more accurate identification, matching, and tracking.
In turn, automated data capture reduces the risks and potential costs of medical errors, and it enables better compliance with fast and mobile documentation at the point of care. It also saves hours of documentation and paperwork, making home health workers’ jobs easier and allowing them to spend more time with patients and focus more on delivering high-quality care.
To implement an automated data capture solution for your business, it’s always a good idea to work with a managed services and mobility technology provider who is experienced in healthcare and can procure and configure the right solutions for your needs. The time, resources, and knowledge needed to implement a solution can be daunting for even the most experienced IT teams, so leaning on outside experts is a smart and strategic way to minimize the challenge and expedite a surgery center transformation.
