Four Hospitals Receive Patient Education and Engagement Innovation Awards at TigrCon 2016

Four hospitals received Innovation Awards from TeleHealth Services for outstanding achievements and best practices to improve patient engagement at the TigrCon16 client conference held in New Orleans earlier this month.

The conference was hosted by TeleHealth Services, the nation’s leading provider of patient engagement and education solutions. Experts from across the nation discussed clinical challenges including accreditation, population health, readmissions, increasing patient satisfaction, revenue generation, and improving patient outcomes.

“Our growing community of clinicians, patient educators and hospital executives shared new ideas on how to advance the health of patients through streamlining education about their treatment using the SmarTigr solution,” said Matt Barker, vice president of marketing for TeleHealth Services. “Innovation Award winners all demonstrated meaningful examples of how hospitals are using interactive patient care to improve outcomes and promote operational efficiencies.”

Charleston Area Medical Center Health System (CAMC) in Charleston, WV has reduced readmissions through a comprehensive clinical strategy including the addition of a video-based patient education system. In moving to an interactive patient care model, readmissions for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) dropped by almost 30 percent compared to the previous year.

CAMC rolled out the SmarTigr system across their four hospital campuses to implement a consistent patient engagement approach. In an effort to improve delivery of patient education for chronic disease patients, CAMC developed condition-specific video prescriptions, which also prompted nurses to provide additional patient resources, such as zone teaching tools for self-management, handbooks, and teach-back education. In addition, CAMC launched the Warm Welcome Initiative in January 2016 with SmarTigr as its cornerstone technology. CAMC produced a five-minute custom welcome video to orient patients to their hospital stay and set expectations for the patient experience. CAMC’s Warm Welcome video has helped adjust patient expectations, improve patient satisfaction scores and provide more time for nurses to devote to patient care.

Interactive video-based patient education is saving staff time while also increasing patient satisfaction for the endoscopy unit at Mercy Hospital and Trauma Center in Janesville, WI. Unit supervisor Deb Conway, RN, BSN, and unit educator Chad Salmon, RN, BSN, teamed up to improve discharge teaching and decided to shift to video-based education with their hospital’s SmarTigr system by custom-producing their own videos featuring staff members narrating the videos to provide a sense of connection to the patient care team. Within three months of implementing the new solution, the unit documented a 50 percent increase in staff efficiency for discharge education.

Eskenazi Health in Indianapolis, IN is providing better care at lower costs, and keeping clinical staff focused on patient care with an interactive patient engagement system teaching mothers about newborn care. Toni Galyan, RN, and Sabrina Dryden, RN, the staff development coordinators, took inventory of the challenges presented by Baby Boot Camp, a 90-minute workshop that was offered to patients. The Family Beginnings Center moved the program to the SmarTigr system and discontinued live classroom trainings, thereby reducing logistical costs. Comprehension questions were also added to the SmarTigr system to assist with clinician teach-back. Over the past year, the Family Beginnings Center has averaged 1,000 video views each month. According to Sabrina Dryden, “Video-based education has provided learning retention gains and better applications at home.”

CoxHealth in Springfield, MO has made many accomplishments in using their SmarTigr interactive patient engagement solution as an integral tool to bring consistent, hospital-approved patient education to patients and families across the entire health system. Tina Tarter-Hamlet, patient education coordinator at CoxHealth, assesses patients and families to analyze and discuss how learning can be best achieved. She works as a critical and necessary liaison and a catalyst to benefit the patient experience along with overseeing the administration of educating patients and families. During TigrCon16, Tarter-Hamlet shared documented improvements in satisfaction, safety and outcomes by using SmarTigr as an asset in her education plan for CoxHealth patients.

Each year Darrin Doman, staff development educator at University of Utah Health Care, sponsors a video competition known as Healthi4U. The goal is to create engaging and informative videos related to health for patients, their families, and the health care professionals who care for them. Students form interdisciplinary teams, write a script and film a video. Several of the Healthi4U entries have been launched for broadcast on the SmarTigr system at University of Utah Health Care.