Healthcare providers can use Oracle Health’s EHR to create risk profiles for every patient and develop a risk stratification model that categorizes patients based on their vulnerability to an adverse outcome. Clinicians can then use this information to inform care decisions, such as prioritising treatment for higher-risk patients. Yasir Khan, Lead Physician Executive, Oracle Health, Middle East shared with Kaanchi Chawla of Elets News Network (ENN). Edited excerpts:

How does Oracle Health help health systems achieve patient safety and quality?

Oracle delivers leading technology paired with a deep understanding of how healthcare works to help hospitals and health systems globally reduce human error, increase workflow effciencies, and further drive personalised care for patients.

There are several features within our electronic health record (EHR) that contribute to improving patient safety, including AI voice technology for clinical notetaking, automated processes, and critical alerts that help to ensure the well-being and security of patients. A great example of how Oracle Health’s EHR can become the cornerstone of critical patient safety initiatives can be found at Children’s Cancer Hospital Egypt (CCHE), which established a pediatric early warning system within the Oracle Health EHR.

CCHE leadership needed a way to decrease the number of inpatients entering code blue or code yellow scenarios, which means either a call for urgent Intensive Care Unit (ICU) consultation in less than five minutes upon recognition of signs of a patient’s deterioration for code yellow patients, or a call for basic life support immediately upon recognition of cardiac or respiratory arrest for code blue patients.

With the help of Oracle Health, the CCHE team created an early warning alert system that is integrated into the EHR to deliver urgent responses when it matters most. With this automated system, nurses are alerted to a patient’s deteriorating condition and can quickly recognise and address health events like changes in respiratory rate, oxygen saturation, or other cardiac or neurological issues.

How does Oracle Health help to advance patient safety?

Oracle Health offers a comprehensive portfolio of solutions designed to improve patient-clinician engagement, ensure continuity of care, and provide near real-time context for diagnosis and treatment. The data and information within our system create a solid foundation to enhance patient safety.

One of the most basic but important ways the Oracle Health EHR can help busy physicians is by providing them with an order set or checklist. For patients who require several different care interventions, relying on physician memory to recall what steps need to be taken for their care makes the patient vulnerable. Using the Oracle Health EHR, physicians can view a checklist to guide them through which steps to take at what time in the treatment process. This helps eliminate the potential for errors and makes it easier for the physician to deliver the exact care a patient requires.

At the organisational level, healthcare providers can use Oracle Health’s EHR to create risk profles for every patient and develop a risk stratification model that categorizes patients based on their vulnerability to an adverse outcome. Clinicians can then use this information to inform care decisions, such as prioritising treatment for higher-risk patients.

Similarly, Oracle Health can provide clinicians with analytic tools that understand the context of information within the EHR to help ensure that issues uncovered in lab work, for example, elevated insulin levels or abnormal kidney functions, are flagged and taken into consideration when prescribing treatment.

What are the tips for patient safety in hospitals?

Clear policies, integration of clinical teams into technology implementation, hyper-focused clinician training on technology tools, and effective involvement of patients in their care can all help to ensure patient safety in hospitals.

Oracle works closely with customers to help them identify ways in which they can leverage Oracle Health technology to solve their most complex challenges and reduce risk to patients. Equally important, Oracle Health provides tools to help ensure technology adoption is uniform and effective, thereby reducing the potential for human error to adversely impact patient safety.

For example, Sidra Medicine, a tertiary care women’s and children’s hospital in Qatar, utilised Oracle’s Lights On Network to help improve documentation and reduce incomplete charting in patient medical records. Incomplete and duplicate charts hinder care teams’ ability to create effective patient treatment plans. Lights On Network delivered insight into data surrounding staff members’ expertise and experience with the EHR. This helped Sidra’s Informatics Education team identify where training gaps existed in its electronic documentation processes and offer support in those areas. Using a combination of one-onone coaching, group in-services, and job aides, Sidra Medicine saw an increase in nurses correctly and efficiently completing patient charts, which helped them spend more time focused on patient care.

How can we engage patients in enhancing safety in hospitals?

Digital tools can help healthcare organisations build enduring, lifelong relationships with their patients and consumers. However, as healthcare continues to evolve—and with the ever-increasing adoption of digital health technologies—the definition of the patient experience must also evolve to align closely with the patient’s expectations of care delivery. Proactively engaging the patient throughout their care from admission to discharge is key.

King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre, a digitally driven hospital headquartered in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, realised a significant patient safety issue related to patients’ inability to absorb discharge instructions.

Without a clear understanding of post-discharge care, patients are at risk of complications, readmissions, and medical errors. Using their capacity command center tools which are powered using data from their Oracle Health EHR, King Faisal identified several variables affecting patients’ comprehension of post-discharge treatment plans, including the patient’s education level, procedure performed, and clarity of instructions from the assigned nurse.

Based on their findings, King Faisal changed its discharge process, starting it from the day of admission rather than the day of discharge. This provided patients with more time to understand crucial post-discharge instructions. As a result, the hospital saw an increase in the percentage of patients who understood their instructions, soaring from 45% to 92% in six months.

Changing its discharge process directly contributed to an increased level of patient safety, reducing the likelihood of misunderstandings, and improving the overall post-hospitalisation experience for patients.

Oracle is in a unique position to really change the future of healthcare delivery. Delivering a safe and effective user experience requires co-design and co-production by developers, clinicians, and patients. With a complete suite of tools and solutions, we can help healthcare organisations be more efficient operationally and more effective in care delivery.

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