Here are six things to know about the partnership.
1. Officials said the goal of the partnership is to define the costs and identify improvement opportunities related to inpatient blood draws.
2. The initial component of the partnership entails various time and motion studies to record across a host of clinical care settings the processes, costs and implications of multiple blood-draw approaches. That includes needle sticks (clinically known as venipunctures) and peripheral IV-line blood draws.
3. Once data is collected, Intermountain’s management engineering team and Velano Vascular staff will use the data to define the costs, both directly and indirectly associated with blood collections and “to identify practice variations that could inform quality and cost improvement opportunities,” officials said.
4. In addition, the clinical and operational benefits of Velano Vascular’s needle-free blood collection technology will be compared to current standards of care across care settings, patient populations, provider safety and patient experience.
5. This partnership represents the first formal, systemwide analysis to comprehensively measure the integral and varied components of this type of procedure.
6. Kim Henrichsen, RN, MSN, chief nursing officer and vice president of clinical operations for Intermountain, said the partnership represents “a unique and compelling opportunity to better understand and improve our practice of this ubiquitous procedure.”
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