Press Releases
Picis Launches Real-Time Dashboard for Hospital Perioperative Departments
Business Activity Monitoring empowers administrators and clinicians to increase OR efficiency, improve billing readiness and support compliance with quality improvement initiatives
WAKEFIELD, Mass. — March 31, 2008 — Picis, the leading provider of high-acuity care information systems, today announced the availability of Picis Perioperative Dashboard, a Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) solution for hospitals' perioperative departments. Picis Perioperative Dashboard's intuitive graphical display provides an easy-to-read snapshot of the current state of the surgical department, measuring case delays, cancellations, quality improvement compliance, patient throughput, documentation completeness, billing readiness and other key indicators. With real-time actionable business and clinical intelligence, administrators and clinicians can anticipate consequences and make immediate, informed decisions to increase efficiency, ensure quality compliance and improve billing readiness.
Operating rooms (ORs) are a major source of hospital revenue and cost consumption, underscoring the need for efficient use of resources and clinical staff. However, healthcare organizations struggle to maintain high OR utilization rates due to the unpredictable nature of the perioperative environment and patient flow. Each day, ORs face logistical challenges, including late case starts, delays, add-on cases, cancellations and other unanticipated events that make it difficult to align clinician and patient schedules with available operating rooms and resources. This can negatively impact productivity, clinician and patient satisfaction, and hospital finances. In addition to a focus on increasing business and financial efficiency, hospitals are constantly implementing quality improvement initiatives to improve patient outcomes.
"Business intelligence and clinical analytics are among healthcare's next major challenges. Dashboards that highlight important “here and now” indicators relevant to front line clinical champions and service line managers allow hospitals to gain more value from transactional systems by understanding process breakdowns and acting more quickly to address them," notes Vi Shaffer, vice president, Gartner, Inc.
Picis Perioperative Dashboard arms administrators and clinicians with intelligent, actionable and timely information to anticipate and manage the day-to-day activities of the OR. An easy-to-read, web page display with gauges, bar graphs, and other visual indicators highlights issues that will impact daily OR activities. This enables OR managers to anticipate repercussions of problems as they arise, and more easily respond to delays and bottlenecks, helping to increase OR utilization rates and keep procedures on schedule. The customizable dashboard can be displayed on users' PCs, flat screens around the OR and other displays, improving communication by providing the entire perioperative department with real-time metrics on the financial and quality aspects of these key care areas, while fitting into an organization's enterprise strategy for business intelligence.
Picis Perioperative Dashboard helps hospitals manage their front line operations including:
- Scheduling and delays - the Picis Perioperative Dashboard indicators notify administrators and clinicians to day-of-booking and intraoperative cancellations. The dashboard displays case loads by room, surgeon, case or patient type. Additionally, OR managers can track rooms that are running late or ahead of schedule and when rooms are expected to shut down for the day, enabling the facility to proactively reschedule procedures, switch cases to different ORs, and notify clinicians and patients to changes in the schedule. This facilitates the same-day completion of scheduled cases without extending the OR open hours, requiring staff overtime or adversely impacting costs.
- PACU throughput - to help improve patient throughput in the OR, Picis Perioperative Dashboard highlights potential PACU capacity issues before they happen, and identifies discharge delays.
- Quality metrics - hospitals can track important clinical processes and OR protocols as they happen to help improve daily compliance and documentation accuracy. For example, Picis Perioperative Dashboard can show how many cases have complied with Surgical Care Improvement Project (SCIP) recommendations, such as antibiotic administration within one hour prior to surgical incision.
- Billing readiness - Picis Perioperative Dashboard automatically tracks completeness of nursing documentation, notifying hospitals of missing information, broken out by circulating nurse. Indicators can also track cases where the supply cost variance is greater than 10 percent of the average cost, delineated by surgeon. This real-time tracking warns clinicians and administrators of cases that need attention, helping to reduce billing turn-around time and more closely track surgical supplies.
The first release of Picis Perioperative Dashboard includes a library of 17 indicators that were developed with input from a panel of nursing directors, anesthesiologists, OR managers, surgeons and IT professionals. In addition, five fully customizable indicators allow hospitals to construct indicators that meet the specific needs of their department or role. Picis Perioperative Dashboard is available for hospitals using the Picis Total Perioperative Automation solution — OR Manager, SmarTrack®, Preop Manager, Anesthesia Manager and PACU Manager. Picis is scheduled to demonstrate the Picis Perioperative Dashboard at the 55th Annual AORN Congress, March 30 - April 3, 2008 in Anaheim, California (Booth #244).
“Managing the moving parts of a perioperative department is like air traffic control — keeping surgeons, nurses, anesthesiologists and administrators up-to-date with OR status is challenging,” said Leslie P. Shaff, MD, MBA, chief surgical services officer, Lahey Clinic and Medical Center. “Using Picis Perioperative Dashboard, we can keep every member of the team on the same page and address workflow issues before they impact care or efficiency.”
“As experts in perioperative processes and workflow, Picis is excited to release one of the first real-time BAM solutions for the surgical environment,” said Marianne Slight, senior director, Analytics and Decision Support Products, Picis. “Based on feedback from a variety of perioperative stakeholders, we designed Picis Perioperative Dashboard to help hospitals improve the aspects that are most critical to their department — efficiency, patient care, quality improvement and patient and clinician satisfaction.”
On May 14 at 3:00 PM EDT Picis is scheduled to host a live, interactive Webinar featuring Ralf Jeworowski, RN, director of perioperative services for Queen of the Valley Medical Center, describing how they use Picis Perioperative Dashboard for business activity monitoring and to increase perioperative efficiency. For more information on the Picis Perioperative Dashboard, visit www.picis.com/picis-periop-dashboard.
About Picis
Picis is a global provider of innovative information solutions that enable rapid and sustained delivery of clinical, financial and operational results in the acute care areas of the hospital. These high-acuity areas include the emergency department, operating and recovery rooms, and intensive care units. Picis offers the most advanced suite of integrated products focused on these life-critical areas of the hospital where the patients are the most vulnerable, the care process is the most complex and an increasing majority of hospital costs and potential revenue are concentrated. Headquartered in Wakefield, Massachusetts, Picis has licensed systems for use in more than 1,300 hospitals in 19 countries. More information is available at www.picis.com.
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