The ACC team conducted site visits at eight of the Advocate Health Care hospitals. The goals of the visits were to better understand the process used to identify readmission risk, review site specific tools/technologies used, detect gaps in the process, and gather suggestions for improvement. Over 70 Care Managers (CM) were observed in the process along with directors and mangers of care management at the respective sites. The in-depth interviews conducted were to better understand overall experience using the current readmission risk stratification tool, glean suggestions for improvement, and to help inform and to validate research and development efforts. Another objective of the site visits was to begin building the relationship …show more content…
The tool is to be completed on all new patients within 24-48 hours of admission. The questionnaire consisted of check boxes with weighted risk factors such as AMI, COPD, etc. The CM checked off boxes that they deemed appropriate for the patient. If the patient scored above an eight (8), the patient was deemed high risk. The tool had its limitations; there was a chance of error on the accuracy of the score. Patients could be scored lower or higher than expected due to CM error when checking boxes. The weights put on the various factors were subjective as well, and had no true statistical significance. The purpose of the tool was to assist in the discharge planning process, however the use of the tool was very infrequent, although being mandatory to complete. CMs view of the tool was that it did not truly assist them in determining readmission risk, they would still visit with the patient to assess and determine their true risk. They also felt the tool was incomplete; it either had or was missing variables that did not truly paint a complete picture of the patient’s …show more content…
In this method, each site has Superusers that will train their peers following a training session with representatives from IT. After the user training, the sites are supported by IT for the week of go-live. Post week of go-live, users are supported by the IT Help Desk for any needs.
“Just in time training”
The ACC team implemented two training methods for the Version 1 pilot. One site requested the traditional Train the Trainer method be used; the second site did not have a preference for training. It was decided that site 2 would be trained by ACC Clinical Process Designers (CPD). The CPDs were heavily involved in design and testing of the solution, so the thought of training the end users would be not be a difficult task. At both sites, support was provided by CPDs and Cerner representatives during and post