Reducing the Burden of Nursing Documentation: The Use of Interoperability, Integration and Geolocation Technologies

This organization is an academic and healthcare system with over 2,000 licensed beds and over 70,000 annual inpatient admissions. In 2018, executive nursing leadership set a strategic priority through fiscal year 2020: leverage technology to enhance communication, patient experience, care delivery and business processes.

This poster will delve into how a major multi-campus academic health system is innovatively utilizing geolocation technologies such as real-time locating system (RTLS) by integrating clinical applications such as Rauland nurse call with Epic and applying interoperability between these three applications to reduce the burden of nursing documentation in order to streamline clinical documentation and augment patient-centered care.

Furthermore there will be an overview of the health system's RTLS strategic priorities such as:
• Enhancing safety communications between nursing and security to optimize business operations related to workplace violence
•    Augmenting perioperative business workflows
•    Strengthening pediatric security safety protocols

A review of how these RTLS technologies are employed for the benefit of all hospital staff – including those beyond the clinical team -- across all hospital entities will be included as well.

Recent research indicates that for nurses, the burden of electronic documentation is a barrier to achieve the goal of clinical well-being, an improved patient experience, and efficiency. This presentation will discuss how the health system is utilizing geolocation technologies such as real-time locating system (RTLS) by integrating multiple clinical applications with Epic and applying interoperability between these systems to reduce the burden of nursing documentation in order to streamline clinical documentation and augment patient-centered care. After a successful four month pilot on one inpatient unit, the health system went live with automated badge rounding functionality hospital-wide at the smallest hospital within a multi-campus health system, a facility with