Early SPIRIT success

Sometimes the little successes mean a lot. Here is a short story of a call-out and a solution during the first official day of BIDMC SPIRIT. This did not take a lot of work and really only involved a short investigation and the realization that a simple phone call could solve a problem. (Not all will be this easy.)

The story is told by Betsy, a manager in the Radiology Department, to the Techs and Associates in her department. The problem being called out was that Techs arriving to administer a portable chest image for patients on the cardiology floor would often find a patient missing. A wasted trip, and frustrating for these very busy people, who then also would wonder why the patient couldn't just have been sent to the Radiology floor to have the imaging done there.

Our first BIDMC Spirit call out was entered yesterday for portable chest ordered on Farr 6 when patients are off the unit. As many of you may have encountered arriving for a portable on Farr 6 - to find the patient is off the floor (usually in dialysis). So the SPIRIT was looking at why this was happening and what could be done. We learned a couple of things:
* This is a cardiology set-down unit.
* The person entering the order does not know the patient's schedule for the day.
* These patients have telemetry - so when they leave the unit they must be accompanied by a nurse. This takes a nurse off the unit, so they try to limit the time away - hence the portable order.

Solution - call the unit first to see if the patient will be there. The unit will be happy to help!

Thanks to everyone who was involved looking into this …see, there was a reason for the patient to be portable and a reasonable solution!

Betsy