A busy Emergency Department (ED) team worked hard to create what they hoped would be a “best practices” standard clinical pathway for asthma. But, how could they be sure it was working? How would they know which clinicians were really using the new pathway, and for which patients? How could they be sure, in the days following implementation of the new pathway, that their approach was actually improving patient results?
Fortunately, the ED team had just deployed AdaptX, so they could quickly leverage their real-world data to evaluate their progress–self-serve, on-the-fly.
In seconds, ED the medical director used AdaptX to evaluate the both the effectiveness of their new asthma pathway and how often it was being applied. Patients receiving the new protocol had a 12-hour reduction in hospital length of stay (LOS), with a 50% reduction in their likelihood of hospital admission. Once discharged, patients receiving the new protocol had a 70% reduction in 72-hour readmission! With this intervention alone, the ED was saving 180 bed-days a year, freeing up scarce capacity while dramatically improving patients’ experience.
At the same time, however, the medical director also utilized AdaptX to determine that the team was actually using the new pathway for only 60% of patients meeting the new protocol’s criteria.
Instead of despairing at the lack of “compliance” or sending a general “call to arms” out to the ED team, the medical director was able to leverage AdaptX to catalyze effective communications with individual ED providers. With AdaptX, the medical director could easily see which providers weren’t using the new protocol, and for which patients. Critically, the medical director could then use AdaptX to share with each provider the clearly-improved results that their peers were achieving with the new standard pathway – inspiring ED physicians to choose to change their own practice.
Sustained improvement in patient care is rarely easy, or simple. With AdaptX, though, clinical teams are uniquely empowered to evaluate effectiveness of care, to catalyze a culture of improvement, and to manage best practices.