Visit us at www.mediavision.com
Reprinted with permission of Press Ganey Associates, Inc.
Visit us at www.mediavision.com
TECHNOLOGY
THE PATIENT’S COMPANION
New System Brings an Interactive, Multimedia World to the Bedside
Technology
The Patient’s Companion With no more than three touches, a patient can watch a movie, surf the Internet, have a video chat with a loved one or talk to a doctor.
By Todd Sloane, Editorial Manager, Press Ganey Associates
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aomi Crider recently had three hospital stays for observation of her fluctuating blood pressure. The 72-year-old is no stranger to a hospital bed, having had a triple bypass operation a decade ago. On her most recent visits to Hamilton Medical Center in Dalton, Ga., she found herself actually enjoying her stay, taking advantage of the hospital’s new multimedia patient communication, education and entertainment system. A news junkie, she found all the cable channels she likes. She was able to log on to the Internet to use Facebook and play video games. The device’s touchscreen monitor, on a swing arm, put everything in easy reach.
Reprinted with permission of Press Ganey Associates, Inc.
“It was really awesome to be able to just pull it over to the bed so I could just relax and look at it. You can do just about anything you want to. I loved being able to just put out there on Facebook what I was going through, so I didn’t have to keep getting all those phone calls,” she says. “When you are in an observation unit, your mind is kind of racing. You don’t know what they are going to walk in and tell you. Having that computer eased my mind beyond measure.” Actually, the system, from Mediavision, a company that came to health care from the digital video industry, is more than a computer. It brings to the bedside a world of high-definition television and movies, Internet access, video communication with loved ones, interactive patient education and telemedicine. It touches on nearly everything the hospital
Visit us at www.mediavision.com
does, with vast potential to improve patient satisfaction and quality of care, while lowering costs. Hamilton is the first hospital to use the system, though Mediavision has recently inked deals with others. The rollout at Hamilton has been incremental, with only the observation unit and, more recently, the women’s services unit, wired for business. The full rollout will take place in the first quarter of 2012, hospital officials say. The company installs its own hospital-wide gigabit network (non-techie translation: big), which it connects with the hospital’s electronic medical records system as a port under the HL7 interoperability protocol. “A big part of our value proposition is that we bring in this advanced technology, install it, operate it and maintain it, with full-time employees working in the hospital, and do it all at absolutely no cost to the hospital,” says Perwaiz Nihal, Mediavision’s CEO. The only cost is borne by the patient or the family, a $10 daily fee payable either online or through a card reader on the device. (Insurance doesn’t cover it, but the hospital gift shop has gift cards.) The computer panel has a powerful dual core Intel processor with more than enough capacity for any current functions and many future ones, Nihal says. The touch screen is completely washable and waterproof, and has no fans to collect dust or retain germs or bacteria. The swing arm ensures that no medical personnel or instruments are interfered with. The Patient’s View “Our initial challenge has been to simplify what is a vastly complex service so that even a 70-year-old, computer illiterate person can lie there feeling sick and still be able to use it,” Nihal says. “So we made it intuitive, and with just three touches you can go wherever you need to go. Our staffer is there to walk you through the device soon after admission.”
“I think this kind of technology is the wave of the future – where we are headed as a health care system in this country. It is going to make everybody more efficient, and it is going to have a dramatic effect on patient satisfaction. ” Stephen G. Rohn, MD Chief Medical Officer and Cardiologist Hamilton Medical Center
What the patient sees is a screen about the size of a large laptop. At the side is a telephone handset with punch buttons, which uses Internet telephone service to call anywhere in the U.S., at no extra charge to the patient. “That touch screen is very easy to use,” Crider says. “I had never used one before, but the young woman (from Mediavision) helped me through it all.”
Reprinted with permission of Press Ganey Associates, Inc.
What she found was 50-plus channels of digital-quality cable TV, video on demand through services such as Netflix and Hulu, and more than 60 free movies provided by Mediavision, with the Internet a tap away. “I was skeptical about this product at first. It’s kind of a small screen compared with our old wall-mounted TVs, and I thought families would have difficulty watching TV with patients,” says Terri Brown, director of medical services on the observation unit. “But everyone loves it, and you see them sitting together and watching.” Perhaps more important from the patient’s point of view is the ability for video visits with loved ones. Through a service Mediavision calls Easy Visit, friends and family can go to a web site, create an account that includes a photo greeting, and type in the hospital and patient names. The patient is then prompted to accept or decline the visit. With a tap, the visit can begin. (Easy Visit is one of a number of technologies for which Mediavision has patents pending.) “We recently had a truck driver in here, who had to come to our ER and was held for observation. With the video, his kids could see him in his room and know that daddy was OK,” Brown says. “This is really going to be something when new moms can show off their babies to everyone via video.” A more advanced application is now being introduced by Mediavision. Called LuvView, it offers family and friends a continuous video feed through a small desktop box. “We create a group called the Patient’s Watch Group. Close friends and family can use it to keep an eye on the patient all day and night, from anywhere in the world,” Nihal says. All group members can participate in a chat function with each other. There is no audio, but anyone watching can double click on the video feed, and, if accepted, can check in to speak with the patient.
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Visit us at www.mediavision.com
THE PATIENT’S COMPANION
TECHNOLOGY
“A big part of our value proposition is that we bring in this advanced technology, install it, operate it and maintain it, with fulltime employees working in the hospital, and do it all at absolutely no cost to the hospital. ” Perwaiz Nihal CEO, Mediavision
The requests screen lets the hospital know when service is needed, and a background program keeps data that will help focus improvement efforts.
“Applications such as these and others we can enable are really taking patient care into the social networking world,” Nihal says.
call button and pain medication. “Patients are occupied and aren’t sitting around bored, thinking about their pain,” Brown says.
The Hospital’s View
The device has also reduced noise, says Shelia Baker, Hamilton’s director of patient, guest and volunteer services. “With those wall-mounted TVs no longer blaring and the screen now so close to the patient, the hallways are definitely quieter,” she says.
For Hamilton, the system has several advantages. The hospital’s food service, which was already on an at-your-request basis, is now accessed via Mediavision. Based on diet, the patient simply clicks through to the menu and orders away, with no phone call needed. The quality of the entertainment, meanwhile, has caused a dramatic falloff in use of the
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Reprinted with permission of Press Ganey Associates, Inc.
The video functionality, meanwhile, has opened up a new application for telemedicine. Using their tablet computers (iPads are now available
Visit us at www.mediavision.com
at the physician entrance to the hospital) doctors can do a video visit with a patient or family member from anywhere.
putting only static on it. We can be as annoying as the hospital wants us to be,” Nihal says with a laugh.
“I think this kind of technology is the wave of the future – where we are headed as a health care system in this country,” says Stephen G. Rohn, MD, Hamilton’s chief medical officer and a cardiologist. “It is going to make everybody more efficient, and it is going to have a dramatic effect on patient satisfaction. If I am in the cath lab and can’t get away, I can call in and do a face-to-face with the patient and family prior to discharge. That is a lot more satisfying for them and productive for all of us than doing it over the phone.”
The Three Cs and the Widget
The system also has a critical clinical function: educating patients about their conditions. Mediavision has partnered with the Patient Education Institute, a leading provider of educational software, with materials that cover 732 topics ranging from diabetes to healthy diets. The software is called X-Plain, which uses advanced learning theory to engage and deliver patient-specific information. The software pushes patients to be active learners by prompting them to answer questions, which increases their level of understanding. The multimedia nature of the programs is notable, Rohn says. “These days you need a video approach to hold people’s attention. This form of education is really, really important when you think about preventable readmissions. So many of those printouts we give patients today go unread.” If a patient doesn’t follow through on completing the education module, a text alert or email is sent to a nurse, who can go and motivate the patient to complete the course. The patient is also reminded on screen, with the frequency of alerts growing as the time to discharge gets nearer. “We can do a bunch of things, up to turning off the entertainment or
One of the screens available to patients is a page for requests. The patient can use it to ask housekeeping to clean the room or to speak with the doctor. Mediavision forwards those requests to the proper person, and makes a note of when the request was made, on what floor, what unit and from what room. Through a desktop widget, hospital executives are made aware of real-time data on the requests, which parallel the three main domains of patient satisfaction – comfort, communication and care. “Let’s look at the ‘clean my room’ request, which is part of the comfort domain,” Nihal says. “In a 500-bed hospital, let’s say the average number of requests is six per hour over three months. Suddenly the second shift comes on, and the rate jumps to nine per hour. This tells you that you might have an issue with housekeeping on that shift.”
can give the patients more ways to make us aware if there is something we are falling short on. Those requests on the screen are a very important way for us to address issues with patients before they get out the door.” Rohn sees other applications for the Mediavision system. “Instead of just telling a patient how an X-ray showed pneumonia, we should be able to punch into the machine and show them exactly what it looks like on screen. A picture here really is worth a thousand words.” Nihal says this is why Mediavision built such a powerful device. “It has a lot of extendibility for future applications. We are really only scratching the surface of what this technology can do.”
When the rate of requests for a given function is above average, the widget shows a red dot. An average rate shows a yellow dot and a below-average rate shows green. “A multihospital system executive using this widget can click on any measure, then click again to see an individual hospital rate, then click again to show the rate by unit and so on, down to the nurse or attending doctor level,” Nihal says. “This way, you know how a hospital, a unit, a doctor and a nurse are doing on communication with a patient.” Adds Baker: “One of the things we work on constantly at our hospital is response to concerns and complaints. Of course, we can’t put actual HCAHPS questions up there, but we
Reprinted with permission of Press Ganey Associates, Inc.
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