‍CASE STUDY: Altru Clinic – Crookston, MN

 Organizational Overview‍

The Altru Clinic - Crookston is a primary care clinic that offers specialty and primary care services to the community of Crookston, Minnesota. The clinic has an array of radiology, chemotherapy and physical therapy services, as well as a comprehensive laboratory. Seven full-time providers, as well as providers from Grand Forks in Cardiology, Orthopedics, and Pediatrics serve the clinic and see between 80-95 patients per day.

Challenges

The Altru Clinic - Crookston had been working with an outdated patient experience model. With the shift of healthcare moving to ambulatory and out patient services, Altru invested into the physical layout of the clinic and technology to prepare for the next era in care. The reliance on static data prevented the clinic from being able to identify all the gaps, causing missed hand-offs and wasted time in operational workflows. There was not an opportunity to have real-time understanding of patient phase of care changes. Without this understanding, it was very difficult to improve the flow of patients through the different practices. Foundational understanding of patient flow did not exist.

Discussion within the clinic intensified about how long patients were spending, or cycling through lab, radiology or other ancillary departments during regular visits. There were no answers. Questions arose: How do we build a means to be innovative and improve the patient experience without relevant information? Can we create more intelligent and productive conversations about the care process?

Solution

To address challenges, the clinic deployed real-time location services (RTLS)across the entire space to drive innovation in patient flow. To gain the capabilities to collect, visualize and make sense of all this data, the Altru Clinic turned to ZulaFly, a software provider that delivers a management solution for real-time patient locating, asset management and staff safety. Altru also utilized Eide Bailly for business intelligence (BI) visualizations and productivity analysis of the data.

With the system deployed, clinic personnel can now ‘see’ patient and resource time elements during the continuum of care as the patients move through the clinic. Information is being gathered on the patient visit as it is happening and staff now have the ability to find the exact location of a patient in an instant – anywhere in the clinic at any time. The Sonitor badges that patients and staff wear serve as beacons, which communicate with the RTLS network.

ZulaFly’s Fuzion software houses and controls the workflows linked to the hardware (badges and transmitters) and collects the data. It then provides the real-time data for the reports and BI visuals for the team.

ZulaFly’s Fuzion software provides functionality such as staff and patient duress,showing exactly where and when a button was pressed indicating assistance is needed.It allows for real time notifications which saves time and effort while reducing voicemail messages and walking around. This allows staff to be predictive rather than reactive. The solution also includes a digital map to view the location of staff, patients, and assets when staff need to locate someone or something. Staff can understand where patients are in the care process, effectively reducing stress, preventing patients from wandering, and creating a better patient experience overall.

Results / Benefits

With RTLS and BI from ZulaFly software and Eide Bailly analytics, the clinic is now able to understand in real time how to better serve patients. The staff are more innovative and are measuring patient metrics not available from other systems. They are setting standards of care that are important to the patient and the provider,saving time and allowing for improved access. The end results include better care, more access, and better use of care resources.

The Crookston Clinic care team is following and using these metrics to innovate and improve:

• Cycle time – Safely reducing cycle time adds care minutes back into the schedule.
• Wait time – Wait time is detrimental to the patient experience. Knowing where the patient waits and for how long is key to reducing or removing it, adding care minutes back to the clinic.
• Time to Provider – HCAHPS allows clinic managers and staff to measure and accurately see and address issues.
• Patient Value Added Time(PVAT) – Quality time spent with patients by providers and staff, measured with RTLS tools.
• Number of Patient Encounters – Measures the number of patients seen by each provider, by day, by service and by area.
• Provider Encounter Time – Measures the time that providers spend with patients.
• Staff Encounter Time – Measures nurse encounter time, scheduler encounter time, etc.
• Staff Safety – Allows for an understanding of where and when staff assists happen,which helps the clinic to be more proactive and supportive of staff. Collecting this data helps to understand and adjust to meet needs.

Very few clinic operations in the United States (other than other Altru clinics)have the metrics presented above or the ability to ‘see’ how changes impact operations in real time. Today, innovation in healthcare is needed. Innovation without information is just a guess, which can be expensive for patients and staff. The Crookston team engage in operationally intelligent conversations and continuously challenge the current state with accurate real time operational data. They are reducing wait times, improving access, adding value to the visit, saving staff time and creating a less stressful environment with the RTLS system.

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Conclusion

The deployment of real-time location services across this clinic has ultimately resulted in a better patient experience and higher operational efficiency. It has set a new pace for smaller-sized clinics that previously did not have access to simplified, lower-cost ways to harness the power of real-time data through RTLS.