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Note: Your Staff Manager configuration may not include this optional application. To add this application to your configuration, contact your Clinical Consultant or Client Advocate.
Patient progress management begins with optimal best practice goals for each patient's clinical progress through their stay. You can then compare and manage each patient's progress against these goals in real-time. This allows you to review performance data while there is still time to affect patients' outcomes for the better. Patient outcomes management reviews clinical patient outcomes for each patient, continuously comparing each patient's actual outcomes to desired outcome goals.
A patient progress pattern outlines and predicts the clinical progress and demand for care for each patient’s entire hospital stay. Each progress pattern defines the patient's expected and optimal clinical progress, including length of stay, from admission to an inpatient nursing unit to hospital discharge.
Patterns define care phases in terms of actual and desired patient outcomes. Patients need different levels of care at each phase. A new care phase starts each time the patient changes location. Demand Manager calculates nursing care needs using demand workload tables and acuity levels (from Outcomes-Driven Acuity patient assessments). It connects each care phase with patient events such as admissions, transfers and discharges as well as changes in acuity level.
At admission, each patient is assigned a Library Progress Pattern based on the type of criteria configured in Demand Manager and optimally received from the Registration application. The Library Pattern specifies, based on best practices or a third-party (as is the case with DRGs), the Total Length of Stay (TLOS) for each patient. Optionally, it may also define the Level of Care, or where the patient should be and for how long throughout their stay, according to the intensity of nursing care needed. The Level of Care breaks down the TLOS for the pattern into interim phases, creating a pattern that spans multiple levels. For example, a patient admitted for congestive heart failure may be admitted to ICU for two days, then go to routine care for two days before being discharged. Dividing the four day TLOS into two care phases of two days each provides interim points to monitor patient progress. When the patient deviates from the Library Pattern, either by TLOS or by defined level of care, Demand Manager can generate an alert to let you know that the patient's progress to the defined best practice is at risk.
Note: The TLOS for any patient progress pattern is limited to 365 days.
The Patient Pattern Management page displays patient patterns as bar graphs showing each patient’s progress at a selected location or level of care over a three day period.
The Library Patterns assigned to patients are updated after the patient is discharged upon receipt of additional DRG, ICD, Diagnosis, or Admit Reason data. The last pattern on file for the patient is used for analysis and reporting purposes.
See Progress Pattern Assignment in Demand Manager for more information about pattern assignment.