Disclaimer: All images shown in this blog article are not of real patients or their real identities. These are screenshots of stock video recordings used in the NOVA demo environment. Wachter Healthcare Solutions adheres to HIPAA and will never share protected health information.
The ultimate goal of hospital staff is to help patients recover easily and as quickly as possible, but sometimes incidents happen that can hinder a patient's recovery. Nurses who intervene quickly will help patients get back on the road to recovery.
Such incidents — like falling in a patient room — help staff realize when a patient may require closer monitoring or assistance from medical equipment. When nurses intervene in these incidents, it is important to document these events to prevent these events from happening again.
The good news is that there is innovative healthcare technology that can assist in these efforts through documentation of these interventions.
How Healthcare Technology Aids in Tracking Nurse Intervention Events
Remote patient monitoring technology aids in monitoring patients to prevent harmful events from happening, such as a patient falling in their room. Now there is one remote patient monitoring technology that can also track these events.
NOVA (Nursing Observation and Virtual Assistant) helps nurses track intervention events with the Intervention Event Tracker feature. The Intervention Event Tracker is one new update to the NOVA solution that helps staff understand the intervention events as they occur in their hospital facilities.
Ashley Kuruvilla, MSN, APRN, FNP-C, NOVA Business Development Manager and Clinical Support Specialist, trains and consults hospitals on how to use NOVA to overcome patient care challenges in hospitals. Kuruvilla says the Intervention Event Tracker is an excellent new feature for the NOVA technology suite.
"The Intervention Event Tracker is a feature that can track each time an alarm or redirect occurs for a patient within a configured timeframe to identify which patients respond well to virtual patient monitoring and which patients may require additional safety measures," Kuruvilla said.
Below are two images showing the Intervention Event Tracker patient charting feature and the Intervention Event Tracker reporting feature. This allows observation technicians and healthcare administrators to review intervention events and filter by medical record number or by date range.
One major advantage to using NOVA is that the Intervention Event Tracker feature is included in all devices and this feature stands solo among other remote patient monitoring features, says Kuruvilla.
"To my knowledge, NOVA is the only remote patient monitoring system that provides event tracking as a feature and we provide it to help improve patient care and workflow," Kuruvilla recalls.
Examples of Tracked Events with NOVA Intervention Event Tracker
When alarms are triggered or a redirect occurs, the observation technician can document these instances in the Intervention Event Tracker.
A trigger chart will appear on their screen asking the observation technician to select if that instance was an intervention event in a "Yes" or "No" answer format.
If the observation technician selects "Yes", it will record that instance of intervention and display a number on the bottom left corner of the patient monitoring window. Each time an intervention event is recorded, the total number of intervention events will be displayed and highlighted in green, yellow, or red. These colors indicate the intervention event tracking threshold for how many interventions have occurred for each patient.
Another helpful benefit to observation technicians and nursing staff is that NOVA can display a notification when charting is due for a patient. Hospitals can also adjust how often charting is required from minutes to hours. This provides the hospital with current information on how a patient is recovering.
More examples of trackable interventions include alarms being triggered, canned messages (in the patient's native language) being sent either via audio or video format from the NOVA device, and when audio or video calls take place using the NOVA system.
"When any of these examples occur, a 'trigger chart' will display on the dashboard for the observation technician," Kuruvilla explained. "This trigger chart allows observation technicians to document on an instance that occurred and is separate from standard, routine charting done by nursing staff."
Observation technicians can also use the Intervention Event Tracker if the NOVA device detects acts of aggression in a patient's room. Aggression events, such as a visitor yelling at a patient or a patient fighting with nurses, are able to be documented by the observation technician. This helps record what action the observation technician took to stop that act of aggression.
Because NOVA devices have EMR integration capabilities, staff can see tracked events pull into their own EMR system.
When a patient is admitted, nursing staff must record the cause of their stay and any recurring events, such as a history of falls, that might hinder a patient's recovery. This information can be found in the reporting section and is depicted below.
Product Development is Key to Hospital Success Using NOVA
The team at Wachter Healthcare Solutions is committed to the success of their customers in making sure patients can recover effectively with assistance from NOVA. To make sure customers get the best use out of NOVA, the team routinely solicits feedback from the hospitals they serve and implements new features as necessary.
From design stage to product implementation and training, a key cornerstone of the NOVA technology is that our team keeps the needs of hospitals in mind. This is done by continually developing the NOVA technology suite with software and hardware updates.
"We look to our customers to get feedback so that we can improve on the technology and services that we offer," Kuruvilla said. "We're always keeping up to date on the latest changes to the healthcare system relevant to how they perform their workflow and how NOVA can aid in their efforts to improving patient care."
Kuruvilla explained that this newest feature came about as a result of a client asking about tracking intervention events. After multiple rounds of testing this feature with these capabilities in Wachter Healthcare Solutions' testing environment, the Intervention Event Tracker is a key feature that is here to stay.
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- January 11th, 2021