WASHINGTON (Oct. 30, 2017) — Urgent Matters, Philips Blue Jay Consulting, and Schumacher Clinical Partners are pleased to announce the winners of the 2017 Emergency Care Innovation of the Year Award, a competition to foster innovation in emergency departments nationwide.
The Emergency Care Innovation of the Year Award provides an opportunity for multi-disciplinary teams to be acknowledged for cutting-edge innovations in emergency care. The award, now in its fifth year, provides a platform for sharing effective solutions that address common issues facing the emergency care community.
Innovations, or tools, were reviewed by a committee comprised of representatives from Urgent Matters, Philips Blue Jay Consulting, Schumacher Clinical Partners, and the Urgent Matters Editorial Board. The top rated tools were assessed based on their novelty, exportability, effectiveness, clarity, and on their ability to be used by a multi-disciplinary health care team.
Congratulations to ED Telehealth Express Care Service, submitted by New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, on being selected as the winner of the 2017 Emergency Care Innovation of the Year Award.
The ED Telehealth Express Care Service uses telemedicine to rapidly evaluate patients who seek care at emergency departments. Traditional in-person Urgent Care and low acuity emergency department visits can take as long as two or three hours, while the 3,000 ED Telehealth Express Care visits were reduced to an average time of 39-minutes. These visits are performed collaboratively by an advanced practice provider and a telehealth physician. This innovative workflow led to a dramatic decrease in length of stay in conjunction with a high degree of safety and patient satisfaction.
Honorable mentions include:
- Acute Care at Home - West Health & UC San Diego Department of Emergency Medicine
The clinical team for Acute Care at Home developed home-based care order sets, process flow maps, and supportive infrastructure, which allows the emergency physician to provide a warm hand-off from the emergency department to the home health provider and primary care physicians for medical oversight.
- ED Antimicrobial Stewardship - UC Davis Health Department of Emergency Medicine
The ED Antimicrobial Stewardship intervention reduced antibiotic duration and improved guideline adherence by using a physician champion, an electronic order set based on 2014 IDSA guidelines, and by disseminating an emergency department specific wound isolate antibiogram, as well as utilized peer-comparisons and individual audit and feedback.
- Timely Provider Shift Report - Edward Elmhurst Health
This innovation was an e-survey system sharing timely shift feedback with providers regarding performance metrics and patient wellbeing or service issues. Timely provider shift feedback resulted in insights on practice corrections and improved patient safety and experience.
All submitted tools that met entry criteria will be posted to the Urgent Matters online searchable toolkit, a collection of strategies and tools developed by hospitals across the country to target specific issues facing hospital emergency departments. View the Urgent Matters toolkit.
