The Value of a Connected Ecosystem: How Data Sharing Expedites Emergency Care Delivery

Today’s emergency departments (EDs) are under immense pressure to deliver timely and precise diagnoses, streamline workflows, and improve throughput while grappling with various challenges. Staffing shortages, violent events, and high or avoidable utilization are compounded by gaps in patient data that hinder the ability to deliver faster, more accurate care.

Let’s Rethink Interoperability

While many healthcare systems have achieved interoperability within their networks, its effectiveness depends on its ability to span multiple hospitals, health systems, EHRs, and geographic borders. Limited visibility into transitions, points of care, and patient histories impacts emergency care delivery. This disparity complicates access to necessary patient insights in emergencies, especially for rural hospitals, which often lag behind larger systems in achieving interoperability. All EDs, regardless of their location, can contend with issues such as avoidable utilization, workplace safety, and operational efficiency, challenges that are exacerbated when patient data is not readily accessible. Without seamless access to a patient’s medical history across different healthcare systems, EDs may struggle to deliver appropriate care plans or support active ones.

We tend to talk about interoperability in terms of technology, data standardization, and operational transformation. We need to rethink this conversation. At the heart of healthcare’s interoperability issue is the flow of data. For care teams, this means connecting the dots between episodes of care, tracking down test results, medication history, and care plans, reaching out to other overburdened providers, or relying on the patient to fill in the blanks. It’s an exercise in data collection that’s repeated at different points in care. It’s an inefficient process that can lead to inaccuracies and consumes precious resources, taking time away from patient care, impacting throughput, impeding the delivery of timely and effective care, and adding to high healthcare costs.

ED staff require patient information to be at their fingertips, without leaving their system. We can do more to ensure care teams across the healthcare ecosystem have easy access to the patient insights they need. A connected ecosystem provides a seamless experience by integrating directly into current workflows. This enables real-time data and insights that facilitate greater collaboration across the care continuum.

It’s Time for a Connected Healthcare Ecosystem

Improving Patient Care
A connected healthcare ecosystem enhances communication between settings, from hospitals to primary and specialty care, as well as post-acute care facilities. By fostering a more collaborative environment, care teams can develop coordinated and unified strategies that follow patients through every stage of their healthcare journey, from initial diagnosis to ongoing management and follow-up. This continuous flow of information helps to preempt complications, improve patient outcomes, and reduce hospital readmissions. The integration of real-time data into ED workflows enhances decision-making, leading to a more efficient, effective, and patient-centric approach to emergency care delivery.

For example, if a patient arrives at the ED unconscious and with no accompanying family or records, a connected ecosystem could quickly provide access to their medical history, allergies, ongoing treatments, and previous diagnoses. This ensures that care is both timely and tailored to the patient’s unique medical needs, reducing the uncertainty and risks associated with incomplete information.

Boosting Operational Efficiency
By integrating into existing ED systems, a connected ecosystem streamlines workflows, reducing the administrative burden on emergency care teams, allowing them to focus on patient care rather than data management, and fostering a more positive environment for both patients and staff. Timely, comprehensive insights improve triage and decision-making, minimizing delays in critical care and improving patient outcomes. Moreover, improved communication between systems facilitates faster, better-informed transitions from different sites of care, reducing patient wait times and boarding times.

For example, if a patient with congestive heart failure arrives at the ED, timely access to data from their previous SNF stay can highlight recent interventions and changes in their care plan. By understanding what treatments were effective, the ED team can implement targeted measures to stabilize the patient and reduce the likelihood of rehospitalization.

Reducing Avoidable Utilization
Timely patient insights enable health systems to recognize patterns of high utilization, implement targeted interventions that prevent avoidable ED visits, enhance chronic disease management, and address social determinants of health (SDoH). With readily available, up-to-date data, ED staff and care managers can focus on preventative measures that redirect patients to more appropriate care settings, minimizing the frequency of preventable emergency visits, improving patient outcomes, and reducing costs.

Enhancing Workplace Safety and Morale
Enhanced data sharing enables ED staff to easily identify and manage high-risk patients and carry out proactive patient management strategies and security measures, improving staff and patient safety. Combined with the reduction in administrative burden, a safer work environment mitigates stress and the risk of injury, elevating workplace satisfaction and reducing turnover.

Implementing a connected ecosystem provided a nonprofit medical center with a more informed picture of the patients seeking help from their emergency department. This key information enabled them to determine a better approach to meet the needs of high-utilization patients. Moreover, insights flagging patients with documented potential for violent behavior enabled the care team to take precautionary measures and de-escalate potentially abusive situations, resulting in smoother patient visits, fewer disruptions in care, and happier staff.

Navigating the Path Forward

The delivery of swift and appropriate care demands an interconnected healthcare system with cross-provider collaboration and access to real-time data. It’s time to move beyond the interoperability conversation and begin actively sharing comprehensive patient insights. The future of emergency care delivery depends on it.