A new initiative at the Nappi Wellness Institute is aimed at improving patient experience by providing safe and timely care.

The Nappi Wellness Patient Care Pass is a special card patients receive upon check-in at their provider. The Care Pass helps the patient’s care team know where they are in the clinic and helps staff provide more timely care. The goal is to improve the patient’s experience moving through visits, including the ability to provide shorter wait times. 

The device allows analysis such as room utilization, throughput, and wait times. The new technology was rolled out last fall in all clinics in Nappi Wellness Institute.

Program manager Jenna Wysokowski said that oftentimes, patients may have multiple stops in Nappi—seeing their provider, then going for bloodwork, imaging or an infusion. The system is integrated with Epic, Upstate’s Electronic Health Record, so care teams can see the real-time location of their patients easily without having to change their workflow or log into a separate system. Providers also wear badges that interface with the patient badge, so that the system can recognize when the provider enters the room and therefore, how long the patient has been waiting. The provider’s badge also contains a call button that providers can use should a patient visit become unsafe.

“It gives us a full picture of what the patients' clinic experience is like so that we can work to make sure that we’re providing the best experience possible,” she said. “We have some patients here for two or three hours because they are seeing multiple providers. So this gives us feedback such as are we scheduling our visits for the right length of time.”

Analysts review the data each month to look back at patient flow for the previous month to see where adjustments can be made.

“It gives us the ability to say, are we running our clinic in a way that’s both efficient and advantageous to our patients,” Wysokowski said.

Wysokowski said RTLS technology is used by many hospitals for many different purposes, including to know locations of assets and people, and to keep people safe. For example, at Upstate, it is used, among other things to keep both staff and babies in the nursey safe, to keep an eye on assets and to monitor hand hygiene. She said she knows of just one other hospital system that uses such program in the same way as the care pass.

“This project is relatively novel in the fact that we are integrating the real time locations with Epic in a complex outpatient space,” she said.

Thought it will take time to analyze each month’s data to make real time changes that will impact patients, another use of the badges has already led to a change for staff. Beth Wells, administrator for the Joslin Center for Diabetes, Endocrinology, and Metabolism, said it allows administrators to more closely examine the workflow of the many spaces within Nappi to allow them to better flex the rooms for other uses. In the first month, it identified a new space being underutilized to offer a new service

“We have already been able to identify new space on a completely different floor to complete retinal scans,” Wells said. “Looking at the data in the reporting we were able to identify available days and times for specific rooms to conduct a new service.”

Patients' participation is optional and, thus far, has been successful, Wysokowski said. Patients pin the badge on the outside of their clothing and return it to a drop box when they leave. Devices are thoroughly cleaned between uses and are good for 30 days, when they will be recycled and replaced with new ones. The devices do not work outside of Nappi.

The Nappi Wellness Institute is a five-floor, 200,000-square-foot outpatient facility that combines primary and specialty health care to meet the needs of our patients, our community, and our care providers.

This innovative new space is designed to encourage collaboration, with several health care services under one roof, integrated with social services and behavioral health care. 

Caption: The Care Pass aims to streamline patient visits to the Nappi Wellness Institute.