Hospitals Honored for Excellence in Interactive Patient Care

BETHESDA, MD--(Marketwired - Apr 30, 2013) -  GetWellNetwork®, Inc., the leader in Interactive Patient Care™ (IPC) solutions, today announced the recipients of this year's IPC Awards, which recognize health care organizations and leaders for improving clinical care and outcomes through the use of IPC technology. The awards were presented at GetConnected 2013, the company's sixth annual user conference, attended by administrators, clinicians and IT staff in San Diego April 15-17.

With the dramatic changes occurring in health care, patient engagement is critical to the performance of health care organizations and the U.S. health system. The new IPC care delivery model helps health care leaders transform care by engaging, educating and activating patients and families throughout the care continuum. 

"We are continually amazed by the tireless dedication these organizations have shown to make patient engagement a core strategy for achieving results from lower readmissions and reduced costs to higher patient satisfaction," said Michael O'Neil, founder and chief executive officer of GetWellNetwork. "It's incredibly rewarding to see hospitals embrace IPC as a care delivery model that leads to better patient care and organizational success in a challenging health care environment."

GetWellNetwork presented a total of 12 awards to hospitals and individuals whose leadership, vision and commitment to patient-centered care has significantly improved patient and performance outcomes.

Overall Achievement
Hasbro Children's Hospital, Providence, RI, for successfully applying the GetWellNetwork Blueprint for Success and exceptional performance improvement in service, quality and operations through the use of Interactive Patient Care.

IPC Champions  
This award recognizes leaders within their organizations and the IPC community, who, through their vision and commitment to patient-centered care, are profoundly impacting patient care outcomes and shaping the evolution of IPC technology. The winners are:

• CAPT Kriste J. Grau, Senior Nurse Executive, NC, USN, Naval Medical Center San Diego, San Diego, Calif.
• Karen Fordham, Vice President & Chief Operating Officer, DMC Huron Valley-Sinai Hospital, Commerce, Mich.

Care Process Integration
Kaiser Permanente Baldwin Park Medical Center, Baldwin Park, Calif., for integrating IPC technology through the multidisciplinary design of innovative workflows, creating care standards for IPC across the organization and optimizing the efficiency and quality of clinical practice. This care process integration effort has improved patient perceptions of their care experience, particularly in the areas of medication teaching and pain management.

Clinician Empowerment
Inova Fair Oaks Hospital, Fairfax, Va., for exemplifying IPC clinical practice transformation through clinician empowerment. Taking a shared governance approach, Inova Fair Oaks is designing workflows, developing processes and implementing IPC initiatives to meet clearly defined objectives. The result of this transformation is a strong awareness, interest and adoption of IPC into daily practice.

Patient Satisfaction
Winchester Medical Center, Winchester, Va., for realizing significant and sustainable improvements in patient satisfaction utilizing the Medication Teaching Pathway and the Pain Assessment Pathway. Winchester fully integrated the Pain Assessment Pathway with their Medication Administration system, enabling automated pain reassessments and documentation. This effort is generating efficiencies for nursing, improvements in patient-centered care and increases in HCAHPS top box scores.

Quality and Safety
Florida Hospital Celebration Health, Celebration, Fla., implemented the Heart Failure Pathway to improve the quality of care for heart failure patients through increased patient activation and education. By integrating this IPC pathway into clinician workflows, Celebration Health is seeing improved activation scores for patients completing the pathway and is recognizing significant quality improvements.

Finance and Operations
Sharp Memorial Hospital, San Diego, Calif., for streamlining the discharge process with the IPC Discharge Planning Solution. By setting expectations and educating patients from the beginning of their stay, Sharp Memorial Hospital proactively identified and resolved barriers to successful discharge. The adoption and consistent utilization of this functionality led Sharp to recognize significant reductions in patients' average length of stay.

Innovation
Pediatric Category
Nemours Children's Hospital , Orlando, Fla., for co-designing and implementing several new features to enhance the patient experience, including Medical Annotation, Staff Announcement, Secondary Display and In-Room Lighting via Cooper Controls Integration.

Adult Category
Florida Hospital Wesley Chapel, Wesley Chapel, Fla., for integrating GetWellNetwork with Aeroscout, a Real Time Locator Service (RTLS), using hospital staff badges to identify individuals entering a patient room. In addition to displaying a picture and title of each person on the patient's TV, the technology logs a record of every hospital representative visit to the room during the patient's stay.

Leadership Engagement
Naval Medical Center San Diego, San Diego, Calif., for integrating IPC into daily practice with the continuous guidance and support of a committed leadership team. Utilizing shared governance to design new, standardized, patient-centered care workflows for patient education, pain management, medication teaching, discharge preparation and hand-off communication, NMCSD is realizing significant improvements in performance, quality of care and patient outcomes.

World Class Service and Support
Saint Clare's Hospital, Denville, N.J., for recognizing that prompt attention to patient feedback is the foundation of service excellence. Through the use of Hospital Survey, How Can We Help, and Make a Suggestion/Comment features, the hospital leverages IPC to have a constant pulse on the patient experience. Across departments, the uniformly swift response to patient communication embodies the partnership of IPC and the hospital in improving overall patient satisfaction, patient activation and staff efficiency.

About GetWellNetwork
GetWellNetwork, Inc.® provides patient engagement solutions that help healthcare providers engage, educate and empower patients along the care continuum. Our patient-centered platform, delivered across multiple technology platforms including mobile devices, computers and televisions, enables providers to implement a revolutionary care delivery model called Interactive Patient Care™ to improve performance and patient outcomes. The company further extends the value of existing IT investments by integrating seamlessly with electronic medical record and patient portal applications. 

GetWellNetwork is recognized by KLAS^® as the leader in the Interactive Patient Systems category and exclusively endorsed by the American Hospital Association. Learn more at www.GetWellNetwork.com.