Patients at the Core of Technology Innovations

Concerns about Mabel’s Hospital Stay and Impact of Technology Failures

The recent admission of Mabel revealed several challenges that significantly affected her experience and satisfaction with services provided at the hospital. She regretted a series of critical issues that included a prolonged stay at the hospital because the doctor took a long time to approve her discharge papers. This inconvenience created a higher risk of in-hospital-acquired complications among elderly patients: Patients at the Core of Technology Innovations.

Inefficient discharge demonstrates communication and coordination failure between healthcare providers that could have been avoided through an integrated electronic discharge system. The other significant issue was that the overnight closing of the pharmacy made it impossible for Mabel to access her prescribed medications on schedule (Gjone et al., 2023). This gap in treatment might have adversely affected her recovery process since pneumonia demands strict compliance with drug regimes. A lack of a proper medication supply chain also poses a potential problem in the timely functioning of the hospital’s pharmacy, which formulates the need for a proper system to ensure adequate stock at all times.

Additionally, Mabel encountered problems related to billing and patient portal access. When she went to inquire about her bill at the hospital, the system had been shut down for maintenance, and staff could not process her query. This is a consequence of poor contingency handling in the hospital’s IT department. Apart from this, she received step-by-step instructions on the hospital’s patient portal link, which she clicked only to be informed that the site did not work and that there were no records of her login credentials in the discharge document.

This breakdown left her open to the challenges of tracking medical progress and consulting with other caregivers. The technological breakdowns that Mabel faced in this episode clearly illustrate how poor systems affect patients’ satisfaction. Disruption in seamless discharge, drug access, and a reliable digital network puts patient safety and experience at stake (Rognan et al., 2021). In this regard, it is pertinent to use current technologies in the day-to-day activities of the hospital in an attempt to maximize operation, communication and care to patients.

Recommended Innovative Technologies

Electronic Discharge Management System (EDMS) for Improved Client Experience

The most efficient solution for avoiding delay in discharge and promoting the transition of care is having an Electronic Discharge Management System. The system aims to streamline discharge issuing by enabling physicians to enter and electronically sign for discharge in real-time (Perry et al., 2020). The system is interfaced with the EHR so that paperwork like prescriptions, discharge summaries, and other treatment instructions for the patient are generated and made available by both the patient and other caregivers.

With the integration of EDMS, hospitals can minimize unnecessary extended stays and improve bed turnover rates and patient satisfaction. They enable discharge-related activities well and effectively to avert cases like Mabel’s extended stay in the hospital. In addition, the solution integrates interprofessional cooperation, which aims to ensure that physicians, nurses, and pharmacists agree with the final discharge plan. To measure the effects of EDMS on the patient experience, the hospital can track several indices, such as the processing time of discharges pre-and post-implementation of the new system.

Also, the survey of patients in the early post-discharge period can indicate whether the changes brought by the new system, including the organization and explanation of the discharge process, positively impact the process (Ferreira et al., 2023). In addition, readmission rates to hospitals will help evaluate if the EDMS enhances the transition of care for individuals who need it and decrease readmission complications.

Evidence from the literature supports the effectiveness of EDMS in enhancing hospital efficiency and patient outcomes. The research has also proven that hospitals integrating electronic discharge management records lower delayed discharges, improving patient satisfaction (Tesfaye et al., 2023). EDMS has also been found to enhance synchronization of caregiving among caregivers and thus, reduce upon discharge medical errors arising from failure to adhere to the set instructions. These findings confirm the importance of implementing EDMS to help improve patient safety and the healthcare organization’s efficiency.

AI-based Virtual Pharmacy and Automated Dispensing Stores

To address the issue of medication accessibility, implementing an AI-driven virtual pharmacy and automated medication dispensing stores would be a transformative solution. This system will enable patients to access their required medications after the operation-based pharmacy has closed. Artificial intelligence at the virtual pharmacy would allow the patients to interact with the pharmacists via a virtual setting and gain necessary advice on the drugs to be taken and other issues from filling prescriptions (Raza et al., 2022). These stores will be set within the hospital compound to enhance easy drug access and eradicate delays since the prescriptions would have been reviewed photographically in advance.

This system would eliminate the inconvenience of waiting until the pharmacy reopens for patients like Mabel, who require timely medication following discharge. Also, with full use of artificial intelligence, the virtual pharmacy can provide real-time information and advise the patient on the importance of following the required medication standards, what to expect in case of side effects, and other related features on adherence. This approach is patient-safe since it minimizes the cases of medication errors and non-adherence among patients.

In assessing the outcome of this innovation, the hospital can assess patients’ perception of medication and the amount of time spent waiting at the pharmacy. (Babel et al., 2021). Further, monitoring prescription refill compliance other than regular working hours will help evaluate whether the system fills the gap of outside pharmacy operations. This is another area where patient surveys and follow-up interviews may help determine if the technology enhances patient satisfaction in the clinic and treatment compliance.

Research-based evidence proves that AI-driven virtual pharmacies and medication stores deliver advantages for enhancing patient care. Pharmacy stores operated by AI systems decrease patient waits, yield fewer dispensing mistakes, and also improve medication adherence (Chalasani et al., 2023). Furthermore, the use of AI in pharmacy consultations demonstrated that patients received credible details about medications, enhancing self-medicating competency (Bajwa et al., 2021). These findings demonstrate that this technology can respond to the medication access concerns experienced by patients such as Mabel.

References

Babel, A., Taneja, R., Mondello Malvestiti, F., Monaco, A., & Donde, S. (2021). Artificial Intelligence Solutions to Increase Medication Adherence in Patients With Non-communicable Diseases. Frontiers in Digital Health, 3. https://doi.org/10.3389/fdgth.2021.669869

Bajwa, J., Munir, U., Nori, A., & Williams, B. (2021). Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare: Transforming the Practice of Medicine. Future Healthcare Journal, 8(2), 188–194. NCBI. https://doi.org/10.7861/fhj.2021-0095

Chalasani, S. H., Syed, J., Ramesh, M., Patil, V., & Pramod Kumar, T. M. (2023). Artificial intelligence in the field of pharmacy practice: A literature review. Exploratory Research in Clinical and Social Pharmacy, 12(100346), 100346. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rcsop.2023.100346

Ferreira, D. C., Vieira, I., Pedro, M. I., Caldas, P., & Varela, M. (2023). Patient Satisfaction with Healthcare Services and the Techniques Used for Its Assessment: A Systematic Literature Review and a Bibliometric Analysis. Healthcare, 11(5), 639. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare11050639

Gjone, H., Burns, G., Teasdale, T., & Hattingh, H. L. (2023). Exploring pharmacists’ perspectives on preparing discharge medicine lists: A qualitative study. Exploratory Research in Clinical and Social Pharmacy, 9, 100225. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rcsop.2023.100225

Perry, M. F., Macias, C., Chaparro, J. D., Heacock, A. C., Jackson, K., & Bode, R. S. (2020). Improving Early Discharges With an Electronic Health Record Discharge Optimization Tool. Pediatric Quality & Safety, 5(3), e301. https://doi.org/10.1097/pq9.0000000000000301

Raza, M. A., Aziz, S., Noreen, M., Saeed, A., Anjum, I., Ahmed, M., & Raza, S. M. (2022). Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Pharmacy: An Overview of Innovations. INNOVATIONS in Pharmacy, 13(2), 13. https://doi.org/10.24926/iip.v13i2.4839

Rognan, S. E., Kälvemark Sporrong, S., Bengtsson, K., Lie, H. B., Andersson, Y., Mowé, M., & Mathiesen, L. (2021). Discharge processes and medicines communication from the patient perspective: A qualitative study at an internal medicines ward in Norway. Health Expectations, 24(3). https://doi.org/10.1111/hex.13232

Tesfaye, W., Jordan, M., Chen, T. F., Castelino, R. L., Sud, K., Racha Dabliz, & Aslani, P. (2023). Usability Evaluation Methods Used in Electronic Discharge Summaries: A Literature Review (Preprint). Journal of Medical Internet Research. https://doi.org/10.2196/55247

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Scenario

You are a nursing supervisor at a private, critical access hospital offering a variety of clinical care and hospital services to the community. As part of this role, you conduct weekly patient satisfaction phone calls and create patient satisfaction improvement plans for the weekly leadership meetings for any patient concerns.

You just completed a disheartening phone call with a geriatric patient, named Mabel, who had a six–day hospital stay following a diagnosis of pneumonia. Mabel started the call sharing that fifteen years ago, she was hospitalized with pneumonia at your hospital but was very pleased with her first stay.

Unfortunately, this hospital stay presented a lot of challenges for her. She shared she had to stay an extra night because the doctor never showed to sign discharge papers, the pharmacy was closed overnight so her prescriptions weren‘t ready, and she still has not received a bill which had to be mailed because the computer system was shut down for maintenance when she called to inquire.

Patients at the Core of Technology Innovations

She continued to share that she was provided access instructions for an online portal to view her records, but the link does not work and the user ID and password she was promised would be in the discharge paperwork was nowhere to be found.

You are preparing for the weekly leadership meeting and have a patient satisfaction improvement plan share in response to Mabel‘s feedback about her hospital stay. In addition, each leader has to come prepared to discuss two innovative technologies they feel would improve patient safety. They are looking at the next fiscal year and want to budget for the integration of two new innovations.

Instructions

Create an improvement plan including an outline for two proposed innovative healthcare technologies on a Word document including:
• Identify all of Mabel‘s hospital stay concerns and describe how the failure of technology impacted Mabel‘s healthcare delivery.
• Describe two innovative technologies you would recommend improving client technologies experience, such . as Mabel‘s, and describe how you would evaluate the impact of these technologies.
• Identify evidence from the literature to support how each technology had a positive impact on client safety

Resources

• McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. G. (2022). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge (5th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning.