Company: Vituity Company background: Vituity is a physician-led and physician-owned Partnership, that combines clinical excellence with business acumen to help healthcare organizations raise the standard of patient care and improve their performance metrics. We are comprised of top physicians, advanced providers, and industry professionals, practicing in 9 specialties and across 14 states. We extend our partnership approach to our clients, working closely with hospital leadership to identify and execute strategies that impact patient satisfaction and operational efficiency. Our physicians and industry experts believe in taking a flexible approach to each client site, applying best practices from across the country to the unique situations at hand. Vituity places clinical expertise and patient outcomes at the center of our practice. Our acute focus and compassionate care are the driving forces behind our ambition to be at the heart of better care. Contact: Lillian Bevis Title: Knowledge Management Specialist Related URLs: Vituity Our instance is private to our partners and employees. Lithy category: B2C Community Innovator 1. Describe the innovation(s) and how you settled on the decision to innovate (user request, Lithium suggestion, internal idea, etc.) How Vituity used Lithium-JX to Improve Provider Experience and Patient Care Healthcare is 10 years behind the rest of the world when it comes to technology. This type of Community platform just isn't used in our industry, especially for providers. We decided to change that after we recognized there was an opportunity to streamline communication. The Medical Director of a department is our key contact and is the captain of their team. There were too many times when a provider in an emergency department would have an operations question, ask their Medical Director, and the Medical Director would then email, or worse, text, their Vituity Operations Consultant with what would seem like a straightforward request. But, what would happen in the background was either a private text that needed to be relayed back to the provider (only to repeat the cycle a few weeks or months later at another site) or a deluge of emails to a listserv of 40+ people for one simple operations question. So, eventually the provider would get their answer, but this is less than ideal because: It's slow! Providers work 24/7 and sometimes need answers to questions at 2AM, when consultants aren't working. It’s not searchable. Others can't learn from the questions that are asked because this valuable information gets buried in an inbox It crowds people's inboxes. We already get enough email. Having all 40 consultants cc'ed on the email streams creates too much noise for everyone involved. It causes replication of work. Often because so many people receive the request, several people will start working on it at the same time. Now that we're in a post-JX world, communication is much more streamlined and providers can post their questions directly in the Community. Improved communication means improved patient care Dr. Scott Zeller is a Vice President of Psychiatry, an expert in his field, but was relatively new to the organization. He started a discussion about the use of Haldol in the Emergency Department. The reason Haldol isn’t recommended anymore is that it’s what they call a “B-52 medication.” It’s a last resort and when it’s administered, it can cause the patient to be more confused. Not ideal in a loud, often chaotic Emergency Department. Dr. Zeller talked about how to redirect patients without medication and if that didn’t work, other medication options that are gentler, but still have a calming effect. What resulted was a robust discussion with different specialists in different places all over the country. These providers typically wouldn’t have a forum to interact with one another. Lithium-JX provided this for them. Having our providers be integrated across specialties increases patient satisfaction overall. Patient Satisfaction is very tightly linked to Turnaround Time to Discharge (TAT-D). This makes sense because if think about yourself going into the hospital, you’re likely happier if you get out of the ED faster! So, we focus on TAT-D a lot here at Vituity to get people the right level of care at the right time. Lithium-JX has seen many discussions about TAT-D, Rapid Medical Evaluation (RME), and Quality Programs so we can admit faster to get people the right level of care at the right time. Here’s another example of one of our doctors finding resources and connecting with people he wouldn’t have otherwise known to reach out to. By improving efficiency, we improve patient experience because we all know that no one likes to be sitting in a waiting room for hours when you’re sick or when your loved one is sick. By offering the right level of care at the right time, this has implications for the entire hospital ecosystem. 2. Tell us about how you made it happen Did you stage it first, who got an early look, how you drove adoption/use, and any iterations you had to make to get it right. We identified a few groups to pilot test our Community. These were already existing communities with an identified champion to help drive adoption: Vituity Women in Medicine, Medical Directors, and Quality Directors. We pitched the Community to them as a new, cutting edge technology, that would make their lives easier. We spent a lot of time on research, with these pilot groups and others. We wanted to learn what our users wanted from a platform like this, and what problems they were currently experiencing that we could solve. Once we had our Community up and running, we turned our focus to education. We went to every meeting we could possibly attend, took the show on the road, and even snuck in some rogue user testing. As we showed people the new platform, we encouraged them to take it for a test drive and paid attention to where people were struggling. Throughout the whole process, our executive sponsor was instrumental to our success. Our Chief Medical Officer made sure the Community was top of mind, reminding people to try it out at large meetings, and using his influence to encourage adoption. Launch Timeline: 3. What were the results? Tell us how it impacted your customer experience or the outcomes you seek as a business. Outcomes and Current Usage Current usage metrics: Registered users: 8,871 Engagement: average 28% active users Monthly pageviews: usually 60,000-80,000. High of 115,000 in November with our new brand identity launch hosted on the Community. Our Community is not “just another tool” – it has real benefits for our doctors, and has helped them save time, solve difficult problems together, and quickly find the information they need. This is becoming the place to go for current, relevant information and collaboration. With this transformed communication, our Community frees up time for our providers to do what they do best: providing high quality care to patients.
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