The Achievements of an Evidence-Based Stoplight

According to Arendt, the ease-of-use of the application, and the simplicity of the stoplight like format, was the key part to its success. “The education for the end-user was really nothing other than understanding what red, yellow and green meant,” he says. “Beyond that, there was nothing special that anyone needed to do. What we tried to do is leverage the orders or documentation that they were already doing to feed this dashboard, so they didn’t have to change around their workflow.”

With the triumphs of the monitor’s first go-around with the VAP rates and stroke management metrics, Eisenhower will continue to use it for other quality metric bundles, Brown says. The next bundles EMC will explore is likely to be catheter-related urinary tract infections (UTIs), heart failure, and other chronic diseases, mainly because of its specific patient population, which is 70-80 percent Medicare at an average age of 78, she says.

In addition, Brown says Eisenhower will pilot for McKesson a summary indicator, set to appear on a different monitor, called Horizon Enterprise Visibility, which looks at patient throughput information. This application will take the summary metrics from a quality bundle and have it visualized on the 55-inch monitor that looks at throughput. Overall, she says, this is just another example of her institution going above and beyond for patient care. 

“I’m very proud of our institution, of our executive leadership, and I’m honored to have a tremendous synergy with our CMIO and our nursing world,” Brown says. “You can sense my passion I’m guessing because I’m really for advancing excellence.”