“The center will help us provide a higher level of service to our patients and physician groups,” said Jackie Gaudette, manager of the nurse staffing office. “By tracking and centralizing our conversations and paperwork with Trace, we’ll know in a glance the location and status of each patient.”
The patient placement center is located in the Emergency Department of the 226-bed facility. Trace will be used to capture three-way conversations with transferring and accepting physicians, as well as important transfer documents. Coordinators will document criteria for patient acceptance and instructions for level of care.
“Our primary goal is to get patient in the right bed the first time,” said Gaudette. “We want to eliminate situations where a patient arrives without prior knowledge and we don’t have a bed available.” The center plans to establish a higher level of accountability by documenting communication throughout the transfer process. “In some cases, if a telemetry or ICU bed is not available, the transferring physician will state that a patient is medical when a higher level of care is actually necessary,” said Gaudette. “Moving a patient post-admission increases both the cost and inconvenience of care.”
By recording calls with physicians, the center will have proof to minimize these occurrences and take recourse if needed.
Trace will also help the center prove compliance with EMTALA, the statute that governs when and how a patient is transferred between hospitals. An appropriate transfer requires that a patient requires treatment at another facility and that the receiving hospital has accepted the transfer. The entire process must be certified in writing by a physician.
The placement center will use Trace to document physician certification, hospital acceptance and delivery of required documents such as patient medical records. Records will later serve as a reference for billing and determining the frequency and details of patient history.
Contact: Erin McCarty, 865-531-4545, erin.mccarty@twsg.com