Month: October 2021

Nurses shouldn’t be bogged down by tedious paperwork or endless charting; they should have every opportunity to care for their patients. Fortunately, there are three ways healthcare leadership can embrace technology and get nurses back to the bedside. 

To learn what those three ways are, read the full article.

Newman Regional Health, a Kansas-based critical access hospital, is running at 110% of its pre-COVID-19 inpatient acute care capacity. Open beds in its hospital are becoming more challenging to find. There’s also a growing lack of beds in larger nearby facilities, where patients are routinely sent to receive specialized care. Some patients have to travel up to 10 hours to find the closest hospital with bed availability as a result.

Motient’s Mission Control equips Newman Regional Health with the tools and data to find available beds efficiently and efficiently coordinate every aspect of patient movement.

To learn the impact Mission Control is having for Newman Regional Health, read the full article.

Sepsis poses a significant healthcare challenge, especially in rural areas of the country. If not treated quickly and efficiently, it can result in organ failure, tissue damage, and, ultimately, death. Two hundred and seventy thousand people die from sepsis each year in the United States – approximately one death every 2 minutes.1 So to provide the level of supportive care necessary to treat sepsis and prevent a patient from going into shock or dying, healthcare providers need to:

• Recognize sepsis in a patient as early as possible

• Provide the required level of supportive care

• Rapidly coordinate and transport patients when necessary

The not-so-subtle impact of medical transportation  when treating sepsis

When a patient suffering from sepsis arrives in the ER, the hospital may not have the level of supportive care needed for treatment, depending on the patient’s severity and the hospital’s facilities or equipment. But much like a heart attack or trauma sustained from a life-threatening injury, the speed and level of treatment in the initial hours after a diagnosis are paramount. In other words, how fast healthcare providers can get a sepsis patient access to the treatment they need will undoubtedly impact that patient’s outcome.

And many times, especially in smaller, more rural communities where greater distances separate healthcare facilities, this means arranging the proper medical transport to the right healthcare location as soon as possible. Because for every hour that treatment is delayed, a patient’s risk of death increases by almost 8%.2

Treating sepsis like the medical emergency that it is 

Once a sepsis diagnosis has been determined – whether it’s made by the healthcare team at the hospital or the first responders on location – there’s little time to assess the level of care needed. There’s even less time to figure out where that level of care can be provided and subsequently coordinate the appropriate transport, be it by ambulance, fixed wing, or helicopter. That means decisions are made quickly. And when a decision is made to transfer a patient, then transportation arrangements must be made efficiently and effectively to save precious time.

However, the fastest mode of transportation must also be weighed against the patient’s most urgent needs. Will a certain transport have the necessary equipment? Can transport and the destination hospital be able to accommodate a patient’s comorbidities? These are only some of the factors that must be taken into consideration – all the while, the clock continues to tick.

How to choose clinically justified medical transport for sepsis patients 

We can help healthcare providers save precious time when arranging medical transport for sepsis patients. Mission Control is our SaaS platform that equips providers and nurses with the tools and data necessary for selecting the appropriate medical transport method. The Mission Control team seamlessly and efficiently handle transport logistics, communicates with all stakeholders, and analyzes transport and facility resource utilization. Sepsis patients get to the treatment they need faster — and healthcare providers see improved patient outcomes.

Learn more about how Mission Control can help you improve the patient outcomes for sepsis patients here.

Sources

1. Here’s Why Now Is the Time to Learn About Sepsis.
2. Treatment.

When it comes to sudden cardiac arrest, having immediate access to hospital care more than doubles a patient’s chances of survival.

According to 2019 data, only 11% of all patients in the U.S. who suffer a sudden cardiac arrest outside of a hospital survive. And that’s after being administered emergency medical services.1 Conversely, the median survival rate for those who experience sudden cardiac arrest in a hospital is approximately 25%.2 That’s over a two-fold increase.

The role of EMS response times in surviving sudden cardiac arrest

So, if a patient can’t have immediate access to hospital care or a higher level of care, then the ability to transport that patient to a medical facility as fast as possible becomes paramount. While studies on the correlation between EMS response times in the survival rate of out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrests are a bit sparse in the U.S., a 2020 study conducted in Sweden highlights the need for efficient patient response and transport. In its findings, the study observed that survival of up to 30 days after a sudden cardiac arrest were notably higher in cases where EMS response times were less than 10 minutes.3

In other words, there’s a straight line between fast EMS response and transport and an increased likelihood of survival for sudden cardiac arrest patients. When someone suffers a cardiac arrest outside of the hospital, the responding EMS will take the patient to the nearest medical care facility. But many times — especially in rural areas — the hospital that’s closest may not be capable of providing the level of care needed. In these situations, the patient will be stabilized—but they’ll still need to be transported to a hospital that can provide the proper care.

So, if healthcare providers hope to drive up the current 11% survival rate of patients who suffer out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrests, they must make coordinating and overseeing the transport of these patients from one hospital to another as efficient and seamless as possible. But how?

Addressing the logistical setbacks that slow down patient care 

Until you can remove the hurdles that drive up EMS response and transport times, survival rates for patients suffering from sudden cardiac arrests will continue to be negatively impacted. Some of these hurdles include information silos (such as lack of visibility into a receiving hospital’s capacity and capability) and communication silos (lack of real-time coordination and updates across all stakeholders).

And for rural hospitals, geography is another critical hurdle. Hospitals in rural areas are more spread out across counties versus those found in bigger urban centers. Not only are EMS teams and those coordinating patient transport stifled by lack of information and communication, but they’re often tasked with moving patients over long distances.

If you as a healthcare provider want to improve the survival rates of patients suffering from sudden cardiac arrests, then you need to:

• Remove data and communication silos across medical care teams 
• Efficiently assess the patient’s current transfer and medical needs
• Quickly find a destination facility best capable to provide optimal care 
• Coordinate with stakeholders in real-time 
• Apply analytics to further improve patient movement over time

How to improve outcomes for patients suffering from sudden cardiac arrests

At Motient, we’ve developed Mission Control, our SaaS platform to help healthcare providers rapidly coordinate the most appropriate transport possible for patients once they have been stabilized. By using Mission Control to coordinate and manage patient movement between hospitals, healthcare providers can actively work to increase the likelihood of survival after a sudden cardiac arrest.

EMS teams and hospitals can use Mission Control to view patient-movement data in a single place and communicate seamlessly with each other in real-time. For those in charge of coordinating patient movement, Mission Control helps them determine how time-critical a patient’s care is and which hospital (considering on-site equipment, staff expertise, geographic location, and other important variables) is most likely to offer the best possible care.

Mission Control also captures and brings together otherwise inaccessible data on a single analytics platform, providing teams with real-time insights across the entire patient movement process. While never collecting protected health information (PHI), Mission Control still enables the analyses of a patient’s condition, factors such as response times and course of treatment, and outcomes. These analytics are then applied when coordinating patient movement to further help improve patient survival rates.

Learn more about how Mission Control can help you increase the efficiency of patient movement — and improve the survival rates of patients suffering from sudden cardiac arrests.

Sources 

1. Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics—2021 Update
2. Survival After In-Hospital Cardiac Arrest in Critically Ill Patients
3. Shortening Ambulance Response Time Increases Survival in Out‐of‐Hospital Cardiac Arrest

As of September 16, roughly 54% of the US population has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.1 While that’s encouraging – and the number of vaccinated Americans continues to climb with a 7-day average of 413,000 administered vaccines2 – a myriad of cultural, regional, and economic factors still poses a challenge for COVID patients in need of hospitalization.

So far in September, the country is seeing an average of 145,000 new cases every day.3 Out of those cases, the daily number of COVID patients requiring admission into a hospital averages 93,000.4 And, unfortunately, hospitals everywhere are feeling the strain.

In the first week of September, NPR reported that 59% of all hospitals were under high or extreme stress.5 But what does this mean, exactly? Based on a framework developed by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME),6 a hospital is operating under high stress when COVID patients occupy 30% or more of its ICU beds. When the number of COVID patients using ICU beds reaches 60%, then the hospital is operating under “extreme stress.”

In Kansas during the month of August, Motient’s patient-movement platform, Mission Control, saw two weeks in a row where hospitals were almost fully at capacity — and the other three weeks were still running much higher than normal.

The federal government released new data that shows a marked decline in the number of hospitals considered either “high” or “extreme stress” when measured against the IHME (Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation) framework – dropping down to 45% of all hospitals.7

Still, this is nearly half of the hospitals in the United States. And when looking at the government’s most recent data through the lens of states with the smallest to largest populations, a clear takeaway comes into focus: More sparsely populated states with the biggest rural areas are being hit the hardest.

There are 23 states with hospitals that fall into the “high” or “extreme stress” category (Idaho is the only state to reach “extreme stress,” with Covid patients occupying 60% of its ICU beds). Out of those 23 states, 14 of them have populations under 5 million: Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, Hawaii, Idaho, West Virginia, New Mexico, Mississippi, Arkansas, Utah, Oklahoma, Oregon, Kentucky, and Alabama.8

This means that 60% of all hospitals considered to be “stressed” with COVID ICU hospitalizations are in many of our least populated states.7

The Challenge of Patient Transportation in the Time of COVID-19

Hundreds of rural hospitals now teeter on the brink of being overwhelmed by the current numbers of COVID patients in their ICUs. The rural healthcare system is already plagued with staff and resource shortages, which only add another layer of complexity when trying to get a COVID patient – or any patient for that matter – to the hospital most capable of giving the appropriate level of treatment and care.

In rural communities, nurses and other healthcare providers in rural communities need fast insight into which surrounding hospitals have the capacity, treatment capability, and resources necessary to provide immediate and urgent care to a COVID patient. Currently, for many nurses and hospital staffers, the effort of communicating, coordinating, and handling various administrative aspects of patient movement simply takes too much time, too much back and forth across stakeholders, and too much focus that’s better spent elsewhere.

Cut the Time It Takes to Provide COVID Patients the Care They Need

We can help nurses and others in rural communities quickly find a hospital capable of taking and treating their COVID patients – and we can also help them expedite the arrangement of appropriate medical transport. Mission Control, powered by Motient, equips providers with the tools and data necessary for selecting the medical transportation best suited for their COVID patients, including equipment and mode of travel. With Mission Control, networked healthcare providers use an acuity assessment tool to select medical transport. They can also use a single dashboard to seamlessly oversee all transport logistics, communicate with all stakeholders, and analyze transport and facility resource utilization.

As hospitals in rural areas continue to struggle with COVID hospitalizations, the ability to quickly find and arrange transport to a healthcare facility able to take patients is perhaps more pressing now than ever. In August in Kansas, our Communications Team called on average, over sixty facilities per mission (per patient) for two weeks in a row on behalf of care teams. That’s valuable time that care teams were able to spend doing what they do best — providing life-saving care to the patients who need them most, where and when they need them most.

Learn more about how Mission Control, powered by Motient, can add value to your facility — and keep care teams doing what they do best: Providing lifesaving, excellent care.

Sources

1. COVID-19 Vaccinations in the United States.
2. Trends in Number of COVID-19 Vaccinations in the US.
3. Trends in Number of COVID-19 Cases and Deaths in the US Reported to CDC, by State/Territory.
4. Prevalent Hospitalizations of Patients with Confirmed COVID-19, US.
5. Where Are Hospitals Overwhelmed By COVID-19 Patients? Look Up Your State.
6. COVID-19 Results Briefing: the United States of America.
7. COVID-19 Reported Patient Impact and Hospital Capacity by State.
8. US Census Bureau.