CNO Survey on Medical Device Connectivity

I mentioned a CNO survey briefly in my Smart Pump integration blog post, but it’s such an important topic that it warrants its own post.

We conducted a survey last December of 4,000 Chief Nursing Officers. The timing of the survey was intentional in that Meaningful Use projects were (hopefully) wrapping up across many hospitals. Setting our sights to the next couple of years, we wanted contextual feedback from hospitals for their medical device integration plans going forward and where they see their MDI priorities.

The survey gathered metrics around some key concepts:

1. Do hospitals have some medical devices integrated already, and which ones?
2. Most importantly, what are barriers to MDI, and which one is the biggest?
3. What device(s) are on the priority list moving forward?
4. What goals need to be achieved by device integration with EHRs?

(Here’s a link to the Executive Summary and complete list of questions and answers from the CNO Survey if you’re interested.)

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What stood out for me when I read the results:

• A great number of hospitals aren’t accomplishing medical device connectivity yet. More than half of those surveyed do not have an MDI solution in place. When asked why not, the respondents said it was mostly about cost (51.7%), with the second biggest reason being competing priorities (19.1%). If cost is a factor for your hospital, I encourage you to take a look at our eBook “4 Ways to Cost-Justify Medical Device Integration” and run the numbers on your hospital. You might find that a second glance at these numbers can be ROI justified by some of our suggestions.

• If hospitals have connected some medical devices to their EHR, continuous monitors and low acuity devices are at the top of the ‘tackled and done’ stack (almost 54%). No surprise, since this is an obvious way to save clinicians time. If you haven’t seen the West Health Institute poll on the same subject, you can find it here.

• Smart pump integration is top priority. Don’t I know it! I said it in my last post, and I’ll say it again: this is an ongoing theme for this year, and almost every conversation I have is around smart pump integration. Integrating continuous monitors, then spot check device data came in as #2 and #3 on the list, and time savings in documentation alone is still a very good reason to prioritize a monitoring device integration project.

• Reducing errors and adverse events is the top goal. 65% of respondents said this, and it goes hand in hand with smart pump integration as top priority. No big surprise here, but it definitely explains the shift away from prioritizing the monitoring devices to the smart pump devices. Auto-programming the pump can help hospitals take a huge step forward in reducing errors since it cuts out the need for manually punching in the medication order information. If you need a refresher on the stats and studies, I referenced them in my last post.

Finally, here’s something else you might find helpful. We provide a free custom MDI Assessment for hospitals. Not only do we help you document the current state of your hospital’s medical devices and EHR environment, but we also offer you some vendor-specific integration knowledge, such as whether or not you’ll need a gateway or special platform in place before you can integrate your monitors. The findings in our MDI assessment make for an easy segue into a conversation with your stakeholders and associated vendors around integration priority and what is realistic and cost-effective for your medical device connectivity needs. If you would like one, please email me at MDIblog@iatric.com, or reach out to your Iatric Systems Account Executive.

Please leave a comment if you’d like to learn more, or email me at MDIblog@iatric.com.