Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/842028
25 Executive Briefing Sponsored by: How Artificial Intelligence Is Helping Fix Hospitalwide Throughput, Starting in the ED A mid declining reimbursement and an uncertain future for health reform, hospitals and health systems today face unprecedented pressure to improve clinical qual- ity, provide exemplary care experiences and continue to meet the evolving needs of their communities. Healthcare leaders were initially excited about the potential for big data and analytics to provide the insight required to prop- erly address these challenges, but over time reality has damp- ened that enthusiasm. Too many hospitals today are inundated with data that fails to offer insights and actionability. From Data to Action Hospitals are missing a platform that makes their mountains of data meaningful. The substantial dollars organizations have in- vested in EMRs represent an essential first step, but EMRs alone are not able to connect the dots and enable the right actions. EMRs — comprised of raw data on each patient's medical care — function as systems of record. On top of those, healthcare organizations have built systems of display, which present ret- rospective data analysis in the form of dashboards, charts and reports. These tools help inform future clinical and process op- timization, but they fail to offer prescriptive, actionable recom- mendations for improvement in real time. "We would look at statistics on what occurred months ago to try to determine our game plan for staffing this month," says Debbie Pender, RN, vice president of patient care and CNO at Mercy Hospital-Ardmore (Okla.). "It helped us understand what happened, but it didn't help us prepare for what was next. It wasn't scientific, it was tedious and it caused a lot of issues among our nursing staff." Even tools with predictive capabilities "tend to sit on top of broken processes like a layer of sediment, because they fail to facilitate understanding and situational awareness among cli- nicians," says James Hereford, president and CEO of Fairview Health Services in Minneapolis. Clinicians are drowning in a deluge of data. Tools that provide retrospective or obtuse information contribute to clinician burnout. When physicians and nurses spend time assessing data and managing alerts, they subsequently have less time to spend with patients. Hospitals don't need more data — they need a system of action and solutions built to translate data into immediate, accurate and actionable decisions for clinical teams and staff. The end result is a superior care experience for patients and more effi- cient and productive processes for staff. That's where artificial intelligence can help. Artificial Intelligence: No More Missed Opportunities Extensive medical training and experience have prepared clini- cians to make the best possible decisions about medical care. However, in urgent moments, the data can be overwhelming — it's not humanly possible to process it all and consistently make choices that improve flow and patient experience. Solutions with AI capabilities that can deliver insights in the moments that matter most allow staff to be proactive instead of reactive. These systems provide predictions of likely operational events and recommendations to handle them. One such system of action is Qventus, a decision-management platform for hospital operations that is powered by AI and ma- chine learning. By leveraging decision and behavioral sciences, Qventus is able to proactively orchestrate operational workflow, eliminating bottlenecks while influencing optimal decisions by frontline decision makers. The platform is always running in the background as it pro- cesses massive amounts of information in real-time. It predicts a variety of scenarios by combining EMR data, historical infor- mation, insights on environmental factors and internal data Even tools with predictive capabilities "tend to sit on top of broken processes like a layer of sediment, because they fail to facilitate understanding and situational awareness among our clinicians." - James Hereford, President & CEO, Fairview Health Services