Sutter Health Reduces ED Utilization and ED Length of Stay
Learn how PointClickCare helped Sutter Health reduce unnecessary utilization.
Decrease in ED Utilization
Reduction in ED length of stay (LOS)
I honestly love ED Optimization. Without it, my job is a lot harder. The people we interact with at PointClickCare are true partners in what we’re trying to do and build, to deliver better patient care and help our emergency departments overall. There's increased provider and nursing staff satisfaction in terms of having a clear plan of care for patients.
Barbara Bond, MD
Co-Chair, Sutter ED CIC, Sutter Health
The Challenge
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Across the 21 EDs in Sutter’s health system, high ED utilization and delays in identifying a plan of care for frequent visitors to the ED contributed to capacity challenges
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For physicians with limited time, the process for accessing information in the chart to understand prior admissions and discharges was time-consuming, creating a barrier to identifying patients at high risk
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With limited insights, it was challenging to identify patients’ specific challenges and needs and to know which resources and interventions were most appropriate
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Disparate approaches to these challenges across their 21 emergency departments called for a solution that could help standardize best practices throughout the health system
The Solution
Sutter Health chose PointClickCare’s ED Optimization to empower their emergency department (ED) staff to deliver more efficient, informed and appropriate care.
Sutter Health chose PointClickCare’s ED Optimization to empower their emergency department (ED) staff to deliver more efficient, informed and appropriate care.
- ED point of care decisions are improved with real-time patient alerts, key clinical data seamlessly integrated into existing EHR workflows, and actionable clinical and safety insights.
- Care delivery for high-priority populations is enhanced with fast identification of high-needs, complex patients and the ability to immediately assess risk of rehospitalization.
- ED efficiency, throughput, and outcomes are improved with actionable data that reduces staff burden of searching for patient history and minimizes ED lengths of stay by identifying high-risk patients sooner.
The Outcome
Decrease in ED
Utilization
Reduction in ED
length of stay (LOS)
Sutter Health was pleased to discover that ED Optimization reduced ED utilization and LOS as it was implemented in each ED across the health system. Barbara Bond, MD, an emergency department physician with Sutter Health, explains, “ED Optimization is so helpful to any ED provider. They do not have time to go looking for information in the patient’s chart. Having that information available at their fingertips that they can review and get a high-level view of a patient and their visit and admission summary in thirty seconds means that ED providers can now engage in that information.”
As a result, Sutter Health has observed signification reductions in unnecessary visits. By leveraging ED Optimization to write individual care insights on high-risk patients, Bond shares that “ED utilization has dropped by thirty to forty percent, and length of stay in the ED has dropped by thirty to forty percent.”
Additionally, ED Optimization provides a notification to the ED physician and nurse that contains real-time summarized information about that patient’s most recent history, as well as the option to view and populate additional care insights that may not be in the patient’s chart.
Bond explains, “It gives us a map of care for these incredibly complex patients that we otherwise wouldn’t have. It saves you time, and you’ll be able to deliver better care and have a very clear snapshot of the patient.”
Along with better care and patient outcomes, Dr. Bond notes that ED Optimization has also helped address the larger picture of capacity constraints. “This will help with capacity,” she says. “Fewer admissions and length of stay reduction is a huge positive for health care administrators. No matter what the diagnosis is, we can do diagnosis-specific care insights around high-risk patients.”
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