The Medical Center at Bowling Green is reducing diabetes readmissions and increasing patient satisfaction by delivering education with the help of a patient engagement system from TeleHealth Services.
“The Medical Center at Bowling Green identified video education as a means for establishing a standardized approach,” patient educator Andrea Sturm said. “Helpful for hospitalized adults, videos primarily serve to supplement clinician-led teaching, and can enhance the retention of information over verbal instruction or print media alone. Video education improves retention of information in patients with low health literacy. To facilitate delivery of video education, The Medical Center of Bowling Green implemented TeleHealth Services’ SmarTigr interactive patient engagement television system in January 2017. The hospital added a robust library of videos to the system.
“Since improving medication communication was another focus for The Medical Center, clinicians recognized the need for expanding the medication videos with the addition of VUCA Health’s Meds on Cue video library to the SmarTigr system,” Sturm said. “Vendors for the system includes Krames Staywell, Healthy Roads Media, Morrison Management Specialists, the CDC and the American Heart Association as well as videos created in-house.”
Sturm said clinicians participated in “go-live training” to learn how to assign patient-specific education and launch videos on-demand through the computer-based StaffConnect application used at the center, and the feedback was positive.
“Staff immediately appreciated the ease of managing the system from their workstations, as well as the benefit of automatic charting of patients’ video views to the EMR through an added interface. Patients and their families can also play videos on their in-room televisions,” Sturm said, adding that there can be up to 200 patients in the hospital with diabetes and that one out of every four patients admitted to The Medical Center has diabetes.
“As an example, we regularly see patients who have never had a glucose monitor, but they don’t always tell their doctors and nurses,” Sturm said. “The hospital displays information about glucose monitors on the TV and invites patients to call me if they don’t have a monitor. I bring the needed equipment to the bedside and teach the patients and families how to use it.”
Sturm said education also brings diabetes readmissions down.
“We consistently see lower readmission rates among patients who receive diabetes education than among patients who do not,” she said.
She said that since January 2017, the videos are averaging 1,000 views each month with combined video views on diabetes topics and medications now comprising one-third of the total patient education viewing activity.
“The Medical Center at Bowling Green is one of many examples of how hospitals are deploying technology to enhance the patient experience with information, entertainment and integration services through network-based televisions. This successful diabetes education program is a blueprint that can be replicated throughout the nation to address many diseases, improving the health of patients and streamlining care and cost efficiencies for hospitals,” said Kevin Colores, TeleHealth Services general manager.
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