New technology to prevent suicide and self-harm

02/25/21 09:50:am

To facilitate timely and thorough patient safety checks during rounding, patients wear lightweight tamper-resistant wristbands with Bluetooth technology that syncs with an iPod device used by patient care associates. Tablets have pictures of the patient for quick identification. The program also has the ability to prioritize patients by acuity including customized time intervals for individual patients with a countdown for each patient’s check. Visual cues, emails, and/or texts indicate when checks are due or timelines are missed.

For 1:1 observation, the patient’s wristband syncs with an armband worn by a tech or patient care assistant, and a supervisor is immediately alerted if the required proximity is not maintained.

Team members can also use the technology to request assistance for a managed response to a code.

Documentation and reporting capabilities

For both rounding and 1:1 observation, documentation automatically occurs with time stamps in the patient’s electronic health record. Desktop views of dashboards allow real-time supervisory oversight and alerts. Leaders will also receive compliance reports by patient and by staff member to help us achieve 100% consistency in patient monitoring.

Rogers rollout

ObservSMART is currently being used at the inpatient units in Oconomowoc, West Allis, and Brown Deer. It is also being piloted in adult residential care for Eating Disorder Recovery and OCD and Anxiety, before spreading to all residential care programs.

Adam says that ObservSMART’s rollout has been “the smoothest wide scale deployment Rogers has seen in the past five years” and praised the cooperation between Nursing, Talent Development, and CTS.

ObservSMART was selected after doing a comprehensive review of technology options and it was determined it would help support the safety needs of the patients in our care. Adam says that as a system, Rogers is hovering around 98-99% effective rounding.

“When rounds are performed at this level, we have seen a dramatic decrease in incidents occurring on units,” he adds. “There is much to celebrate as we continue to strive for 100% effective rounding and no incidents on units.”

Executive director of Nursing Terri Cohn says she’s heard positive responses from care teams during Gembas, including: