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THE PROBLEM
Catawba Valley Medical Center (CVMC) wanted to address inefficient order requests for respiratory therapy. In addition to their scheduled patient load, respiratory therapists are regularly requested for assessments and treatments for patients located all over the facility. As Laurie Joplin, Director of Pulmonary Services, states, “We travel constantly from one floor to another, we’re in the Emergency Room, we’re in CCU, we’re everywhere. Our workflow is varied every day.” The highly mobile nature of this role made it difficult to get timely notifications to respiratory therapists via traditional methods.
To complicate matters further, each department had their own process for requesting support from the respiratory therapy team, including phone calls, overhead and device paging, and printed orders. To receive essential notifications from the multiple departments they supported, CVMC respiratory therapists typically carried at least 3 different devices at one time, including multiple pagers and even an iPod.
If the nurse on the floor or the unit secretary was not able to reach the respiratory therapist, there had to be a way to relay the order. The solution was printed orders; however, there was no dedicated staff to get the printed orders to the therapists. This required the therapists to travel across the facility up to 12 times per day to receive physical paper orders, resulting in delays in patient care and unnecessary steps for the therapists.
Timely response from a respiratory therapist to an order request is essential for positive patient outcomes and can have a significant impact on length of stay. CVMC set about automating and streamlining their respiratory therapist order workflow with two goals in mind:
- Eliminate unnecessary delays in delivering treatment
- Reduce the physical and technical burden on clinicians and staff
THE SOLUTION
In the summer of 2023, CVMC integrated Backline’s clinical communication platform with their EHR to deliver orders directly to the respiratory therapists. When an order for a new respiratory request is placed in the EHR, a notification is automatically sent via Backline to the appropriate therapist based on the patient’s location. The message therapists receive contains detailed patient information, eliminating the need to enter other applications before heading to the patient.
The therapists have dramatically reduced the number of devices they carry and no longer have to rely on paper orders. They receive the notification in real time with the type of request and the location of the patient and can quickly present at the patient’s bedside for the intervention.
“My staff has not had a device make their lives easier in the 6 years I have been here, until now. With Backline, order notification has been very timely and very efficient. The workflow is just so much better. It saves steps and it saves time. It is so easy, and everyone was able to pick up the workflow within 1 day. It was exactly what we envisioned.”
–Laurie Joplin, Director of Pulmonary Services
THE RESULTS
By streamlining the respiratory therapist order workflow, CVMC was able to achieve:
Workflow automation
Order notifications are automatically delivered to the appropriate therapists upon entry into the EHR, supporting CMS requirements and eliminating multiple, manual, time-consuming processes between request and response.
Result: An efficient, effective workflow for all parties involved.
Reduction of physical and technical burden on clinicians and staff
Respiratory therapists are no longer required to carry multiple devices or pick up printed orders to receive essential notifications, simplifying their daily activities and dramatically reducing the number of unnecessary steps they take in a day. Furthermore, staff members have fewer devices and systems they need to support.
Result: Increased clinician and staff satisfaction, and a reduction in operational complexity and cost.
Accelerated speed to care
By eliminating cumbersome processes, respiratory therapists are now notified of requests immediately. This allows them to quickly deliver necessary patient care versus spending time on administrative processes.
Result: Faster time to care and increased patient satisfaction.
Catawba Valley Medical Center, Hickory NC
- Total Beds – 258
- Total Employees – 2171
Catawba Valley Health System
- Catawba Valley Medical Center
- 16 family medicine practices
- Two urgent care centers
- Fitness Plus
- Five employer-based clinics
- Four specialty practices
- Center for Wound Healing & Hyperbarics
- Center for Sleep Disorders
- Community Health Services Center
- Imaging Center
- Viewmont Ambulatory Surgery Center
Awards & Recognition
- Region’s largest not-for-profit community hospital and only level III Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU)
- Women’s Choice Award winner for America’s Best 100 Hospitals for Patient Experience for six consecutive years
- American College of Surgeons Accredited Comprehensive Community Cancer Center