CipherHealth’s Partners In Excellence User Conference focused not only on implementing innovative uses for CipherHealth technology but also on improving existing programs. During the “Refreshing Your CipherRounds Programs: Best Practices to Achieving Organizational Goals” panel, Vanessa Mona, Director of Care Experience at Henry Ford Health System, and Lisa Romano RN MSN, Chief Nursing Officer at CipherHealth, reviewed some of the challenges health systems face when implementing new technology and how to utilize data to overcome those challenges.
Henry Ford’s Rounding Journey
In early 2014, Henry Ford Health System, which consists of 5 hospitals, 200 sites, and 31,000 employees, identified the need for a rounding tool that was customizable, purposeful, and ultimately scalable. The system ultimately decided to implement CipherRounds in 2014, and by 2017 all Inpatient hospitals had completed implementation of the digital rounding tool. As a result of the staggered and drawn-out implementation, each site had multiple scripts, different goals, and was seeing varying levels of success. Upon further analysis of the CipherRounds program at each hospital, the team saw one hospital outperforming the rest due to its consistent identification of opportunity areas. Utilizing the data from this hospital, the Henry Ford team revamped its rounding program. To achieve success, the leadership team decided to standardize scripts and create one goal of rounding on 50% of patients and ensuring that each round identified two or more opportunity areas for improvement. These opportunities could range from following up on medications to getting a blanket for a patient in order to ensure safe and positive experiences.
REAL rounds lead to real impact
As part of its re-launch, the team also implemented REAL+. REAL+ is shorthand for Rounding Embraced by All Leaders-plus and represents Henry Ford Health System’s consistent approach to align quality, safety and service as an integral part of the customer experience. Using REAL+, they seek and respond to feedback through the conversations they have with customers and team members during rounding. Traditionally, REAL rounding has been used to round on patients, but the new REAL+ rounding extends rounding to front-line staff and aims to identify reliability concerns.
A Shift in Rounding Culture
As a result of its revamped rounding program, Henry Ford involved senior leaders, business unit executives, supervisors, and more to shift the engagement journey from one that just focuses on patients to one that focuses on patients and staff. Using the CipherRounds tool, team members can now (quickly and easily!) swipe from a list of patients to a list of staff to meet their staff and patient rounding goals. The simplicity of switching rounding environments helps the staff easily and effortlessly conduct purposeful rounds on patients and provide real-time feedback and performance-coaching to staff.
Henry Ford is just one example of an organization that’s effectively used data to revamp its program. It’s also an example of how data can be used to drive change, and how re-alignment to a mission can be supported by technology. Be sure to read other User Conference blog posts to see which other organizations have successfully utilized data to implement and optimize interventions.
