Hospitals and other healthcare providers face continuing pressure from payers, regulatory
agencies, and consumers to demonstrate improved patient safety and medical outcomes.
The HITECH/ARRA stimulus funds and incentive programs encourage rapid implementation
of new applications and technology, and the convergence of medical and information
technology poses real challenges for IT professionals.
Now more than ever, IT professionals must understand how their decisions can impact
patient care, from causing inconvenience or frustration for the care giver to causing
increased patient morbidity or even fatality. Architecting solutions to achieve
the benefits of medical and information technology convergence requires a patient-centric
approach to technology acquisition and deployment and an unprecedented level of
collaboration between health care providers, IT, biomedical/clinical engineering,
and technology vendors.
Santa Rosa Consulting recognizes the enormity of change medical and information
technology convergence will have on hospitals and offers the following suite of
services and solutions to address these challenges.
- Point of Care Technology Assessments
- Point of Care Workflow Optimization
- Patient Care Device Integration
- Patient Care Device Service Models
- IEC 80001 Implementation Support
Point of Care Technology Assessments
Point of Care Technology Assessment is our management consulting solution to assist
our clients to evaluate medical and information technology at the point of care.
Using a multi-disciplinary team of subject matter experts, we engage stakeholders
in your organization to envision the optimized medical connectivity environment,
taking into consideration your patient mix, care delivery protocols, and all of
the various technologies deployed at the point of care (e.g., nurse call, wireless
RFID and telephony, messaging middleware, medical monitoring and diagnostic testing
devices). Our deliverable is a set of technical and
patient care roadmaps to budget for and implement that environment.
Point of Care Workflow Optimization
Point of Care Workflow Optimization is our consulting service designed to optimize
patient flow in a department (e.g., OR, ED) or across the enterprise. Key drivers
for this service include the need to evaluate new care delivery models such as variable
acuity nursing to reduce inappropriate admission to high dependency units (e.g.,
ICU, telemetry, and step down), an interest in low acuity monitoring to detect patients
with deteriorating clinical conditions (a focus of The Joint Commission), and the
implementation of new technology (e.g., bed board, real time location system [RTLS])
at the point of care.
Patient Care Device Integration
Patient Care Device Integration (“PCDI”) is a suite of services that is more specifically
tailored to evaluating, acquiring, implementing and managing the technology that
connects patient care medical devices with clinical applications. Developing a successful
plan to manage PCDI requires negotiations across traditional hospital silos and
an in-depth understanding of point of care workflows, device connectivity and the
intricacies of vendors’ medical device and connectivity offerings. Santa Rosa Consulting
offers the experience and skills of a multi-disciplinary team including biomedical,
nursing, and IT professionals to implement PCDI in a department, a critical care
unit or across your enterprise. Specific services include:
- Analysis and optimization of caregiver workflows and automation at the point-of
care, both at the bedside and in departments such as Cardiology, ER, and ICU
- Analysis of your current biomedical device inventory to identify opportunities and
challenges for integrating device data with clinical information systems and EMRS/EHRs
- Assistance with technology vendor selection including evaluation of PCDI market
offerings from manufacturers and third party device integrators and contract negotiations
- Evaluation and risk mitigation of the impact PCDI has on network architecture, support,
and security
- Staffing the diverse project team it takes to implement PCDI including project managers,
biomedical engineers, IT and clinical analysts, and HL7 programming experts
Patient Care Device Service Models
Patient Care Device Service Models is our offering that focuses on the activities
required to effectively merge biomedical engineering functions with IT functions
to support PCDI. Our solution set includes optimizing people (skill sets, staffing),
processes and technology in a blended environment to improve efficiencies and reduce
costs.
IEC 80001 Implementation Support
Risk Management/IEC 80001 Support focuses on assisting hospitals to mitigate risk
associated with compliance with the IEC 80001 standards. These standards, to be
published at the beginning of 2010, specify activities required of hospitals as
well as medical device and IT vendors when medical devices are connected to a provider’s
IT network. Although these standards are optional, those responsible for ensuring
the safety and effectiveness of medical devices expect that accreditation bodies
may require adoption, or payers such as CMS may adopt the standard as a prerequisite
for reimbursement.