By Christina Orlovsky, senior staff writer
Providing quality long-term care for the nation’s elderly
population is a great concern for both caregivers and family members. In answer
to the growing need for safe, efficient patient care, a new technology has been
created to ease the documentation and communication process for nurses and
nursing assistants at senior care facilities.
The AccuNurse communication and documentation system is used
by nursing staff at long-term care facilities to review resident care plans and
document care as it takes place. Developed by Adherence Technologies, a Dulles,
Virginia, health care communications company, AccuNurse relies on
voice-activated software technology to record and relay information through a
wireless headset worn by a nurse’s aide.
When wearing this headset, the aide is able to ask questions
of the AccuNurse system to learn the most up-to-date care plans as recorded into
the system by a charge nurse earlier that day. The aide is also then able to
relay back the care provided during that visit. This allows for accurate,
immediate transmission of patient data to the patient’s care records and assists
nurses and nursing staff who are tending to multiple patients reduce the amount
of specific patient information they need to commit to memory, limit paperwork
and reduce time and error risk of recording information by hand at the end of a
shift.
“AccuNurse allows senior care facilities to improve their
quality of care by providing the nursing staff with the freedom and flexibility
to review and track patient care profiles at any time and any place,” explained
Alan Letzt, president of Adherence Technologies.
Preliminary findings from an Adherence Technologies survey of
client facilities found that senior centers that use AccuNurse instead of
traditional paper documentation experience a 55 percent reduction in the number
of times staff call down the hall for assistance; a 65 percent reduction in the
number of times staff walk down the hall to search for other staff; a 55 percent
reduction in staff overtime costs, driven by a 30-minute reduction in
end-of-shift reporting for nurses and a 15-minute reduction for certified
nursing assistants; and a 63 percent decrease in the amount of paperwork needed
to be completed by CNAs.
“AccuNurse helps to enhance the power of community by
providing seamless communication and documentation for the entire senior care
facility, including doctors, nurses, CNAs, dietitians, therapists and
administrators,” Letzt added.
The latest version of the technology, AccuNurse 2.0, takes
communication one step further by providing the family members of long-term-care
residents with instant e-mail notifications and updates about the care the
patient is receiving.
“AccuNurse 2.0 takes the same principle and applies it to the
resident’s families,” Letzt said. “Now family members can have the piece of mind
that their loved ones are receiving the appropriate care.”
© 2006. AMN Healthcare, Inc. All Rights Reserved.