A Dashboard for OR Patient Safety Optimization

No, in fact, LiveData came in and did lunch-and-learns, where they would review the data, and the staff would be involved in tweaking the data, and LiveData would tweak their system and bring it back. And when we went live, April 30 and May 1, there were really no issues at all. It was a turn-it-on-and-it-worked kind of situation. And I’ve been monitoring whether they’ve been having any issues with the monitors or anything, and I haven’t heard anything.

Has this improved clinicians’ satisfaction with processes in the OR?

Wells: I think so. Anything you add to someone’s processes, well, I think there was a little bit of skepticism when we first started talking about it, but when the physicians and nurses started training in this, people said, well, this might be a nice thing. So it’s not anything new we’re adding to our job other than having a big monitor with a checklist on it and nurses clicking on that checklist. So I’ve heard favorable comments, because everyone feels we’re doing the same things in the same way with each patient, and we’re being patient. So the vital signs and all the other data points are there; so it’s been very positive.

Is there anything you’d share with CIOs, CMIOs, and VPs of clinical informatics about this?

If they were looking at some kind of program like this, I would recommend that they involve some type of multidisciplinary group to plan this, as well as the informatics team that needs to ensure the integration of all the existing programs that feed into it, and that they look into customizing this and make this work for their area; because if you customize this, people will adapt to this better. And Storz, the vendor, Carl Storz Endoscopy, LiveData is one of their divisions; and they’ve had a group of people working with us. And I get reports on a daily basis saying we completed the timeout 100 percent of the time, the debriefing 100 percent of time.

And what lessons have been learned from the IT side on implementing something like this?

Christensen: Knowing your systems that they’re trying to pull their data from, and helping them out in terms of technical discussions, are very important. From the LiveData side, we were told this was probably their smoothest go-live, because we knew where all the mappings were, and could answer their questions pretty efficiently. And the LiveData people were very easy to communicate with.