Rounding is a critical process that can be utilized by every healthcare provider in their care setting to improve clinical outcomes, patient experience, and staff engagement. Most providers with advanced rounding practices have looked to adopt solutions to aid the standardization, accountability, and data aggregation pieces of the existing rounding practice.
What we wanted to highlight today is one of CipherHealth’s clients who has implemented the CipherRounds to aid their many different types of rounds and rounding programs. The Massachusetts-based health system currently uses CipherRounds for Leader Rounds, Multidisciplinary Rounds, ED Rounds, Staff Rounds and have, most recently, implemented Patient and Unit Tracer Rounds.
For those unfamiliar, the tracer methodology uses information from the organization to follow the experience of care, treatment, or services for a number of patients through the organization’s entire health care delivery process. The main goal of this round is to ensure the process by which care is delivered is in adherence to the Joint Commission’s standards of care. The aim of digitalizing their Patient and Unit Tracer Rounds is to bring an element of data aggregation that they never had prior to CipherRounds. With the immediate reporting and data aggregation capabilities of CipherRounds, this team can now pull Tracer round reports for the Joint Commission and the reports will chart all the responses to the rounds.
For Patient Tracer rounds, the hospital is asking questions that fall into 22 different categories on their rounding templates. Everything from NPSG Guidelines, Pain Management, 24hr Screening, and Patient Education are reviewed from the time of admission to discharge for several patients.
For Unit Tracer rounds, the hospital is conducting observational checks that fall into 6 main categories: 1) Fire Safety Functions 2) Hazardous Materials Safety 3) Infection Control 4) Security Function 5) Medication Management 6) Equipment Management. As soon as any issue is found throughout the rounding process, CipherRounds triggers an email Alert to the appropriate staff to resolve the issue immediately. With CipherRounds, staff members can take photos of issues, record audio clips and dictate notes for the responding teams.
Through the use of Cipher Rounding, providers are able to standardize Tracer rounds to ensure all measures are checked while also having immediate data aggregation. Prior to the use of a digital tool, the collection process utilized pen and paper, making the data aggregation process extremely laborious. Now, a simple click produces dozens of meaningful reports that are ready for review by hospital teams and the Joint Commission.
