Patient transfers require an immense amount of time and energy. But in capacity-limited health systems, transfers are increasingly necessary.
Timely and efficient patient transfers are key to achieving the best possible outcomes and ensuring that patients receive the right level of care at the right time. In an October Becker's Hospital Review webinar sponsored by TigerConnect, Mark Sutherland, MD, medical director of the Patient Placement Division for the University of Maryland Access Center (UMAC), discussed how modern communication technology allows UMAC to quickly and efficiently transfer patients within the University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS), freeing valuable caregiver time and improving outcomes.
Three key takeaways were:
- Transfers require significant resources, but due to capacity issues, transfers are essential. The typical transfer process is time and labor intensive, involving calls back and forth between facilities to locate an available bed. That means the right caregivers and access facilitators must be available on the phone at the same time, creating patient care bottlenecks and complicating the process.
"Transfers, historically, involve an extraordinarily inefficient process," Dr. Sutherland said. "I say this as an emergency department physician myself. You can spend a ton of time on the phone, in almost a game of phone tag." COVID highlighted the challenges, as overtaxed caregivers were constantly scrambling to try to find beds. - A secure messaging system that enabled asynchronous communication helped correct the previous "backward approach." Dr. Sutherland described the previous transfer workflow at UMMS: "We would get everyone on the phone, we'd say, can you take this patient? We'd spend 20 minutes telling them the whole clinical story and then we'd find out at the end, 'We don't have a bed,' or we had run out of transport assets, and we couldn't actually move the patient or they're too unstable to move."
After examining the problems with this approach, UMMS reengineered the process. Combined with EHR functionality and TigerConnect's messaging platform, the workflow now starts when a provider sends an electronic transfer request that includes key information from the EHR, which automatically generates a group message involving the sending and receiving providers and the UMAC transfer team.
The providers then can communicate asynchronously and a transfer coordinator manages reports and transport when a bed is assigned. That straightforward process has replaced the previous complicated 14-step process, Dr. Sutherland said. - The new approach has resulted in faster time to transfer, shorter stays and less leakage. Providers are happier too, Dr. Sutherland said. In a satisfaction survey of UMMS providers regarding the new process, they preferred the TigerConnect workflow to phone-based approaches.
In summarizing lessons learned, Dr. Sutherland observed that the asynchronous workflows from a secure messaging system are far more efficient for providers; however, some providers will have difficulty adopting and will prefer to use the phone.
He also noted that with a secure messaging platform like TigerConnect's, health systems can improve their outcomes and can allow providers to spend less time working the phones, less time on hold and more time with patients.
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