St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton (SJHH) is currently in the process of operationalizing the Deterioration Index, a Cognitive Computing model that acts as an extension of the Epic electronic health record to help detect early signs of patient deterioration in order to determine the likelihood that a patient will experience an escalation in care (i.e., transfer to ICU, Code Blue, or CCRT intervention) or mortality event during their hospital stay in real time.
Traditionally, significant resources have been devoted to identifying and treating patients who are clinically deteriorating. Existing tools and early warning systems used to determine patient acuity, such as EWS/CREWS, have been relatively simplistic and required double documentation by the clinical team. This meant that any interventions tended be reactionary; patients would already be deteriorating by the time they were identified as such. With the introduction of the Deterioration Index at SJHH, clinicians are able to take a proactive approach with a model that improves upon the traditional early warning systems and dynamically responds to information entered into the patient's chart through any Epic workflow, providing the most up-to-date risk assessment based on the information available in the patient’s chart.
SJHH is currently using a phased implementation strategy to operationalize the model, first activating Deterioration Index alerts for the Critical Care Response Team (CCRT) to optimize clinical workflows, minimize the presence of noise in the data model, and review the current state of related nursing assessments and training, prior to operational expansion across inpatient units.
Presented by:
Rachael Gray, is a Senior Project Analyst at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton, bringing with her over four years of experience in IT project management within the healthcare and public sector. Her role as a project analyst has seen her take the lead and contribute to a diverse range of healthcare technology implementations. Her professional journey includes pivotal roles in several significant advancement projects, including supporting the introduction of Epic EMR at the Ottawa Heart Institute in 2019; overseeing the corporate implementation of the Epic-based clinical secure messaging solution, Secure Chat, at St. Joseph’s; spearheading the deployment of Microsoft’s cloud-powered productivity platform, Office 365, across St. Joseph’s clinical and non-clinical departments; and leading the implementation of the Deterioration Index model at St. Joseph’s, a cognitive computing algorithm used to help detect early signs of patient deterioration.
Kevin Fatyas, is a data scientist at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton with over five years of specialized experience in healthcare analytics, predictive modeling and applied mathematics. As a subject matter expert on all data collected in Epic’s EHR system (“Dovetale”), he advises hospital leaders on the potential of data to generate meaningful insights through the use of advanced analytics and supports the validation and evaluation of machine learning tools supporting patient safety and clinician productivity.
Earn One Continuing Education Unit (CEU) for attending this webinar. Content from the webinar aligns with Core Health Informatics Topics: The Canadian Healthcare System, Information Technology, Analysis and Evaluation
