On a Journey to Bring the Human Touch Back to Healthcare
How MDM Healthcare and LG Help Patient and Provider Better Connect
“When the pandemic hit, we were required to wear full Personal Protective Equipment. I wore an N95 mask with a surgical mask over that, along with goggles and a face shield. From my cap to my gloves to my shoes, I was covered head-to-toe in PPE clothing. How is the patient supposed to hear me, understand me, and feel that I’m a warm and reassuring presence at the bedside when all they can see of me are my eyes? Hospitals and staff need to be as safe and efficient as possible, but we also need to keep humanity in healthcare!” — Linda F. Robinson MSN, BSN, RN, Vice President of Clinical Excellence, MDM Healthcare
Robinson has been a nurse for 34 years with 28 years of that career spent in the emergency room. To say that she is passionate about patient comfort would be an understatement. In her role with MDM Healthcare, Robinson has become a devoted patient advocate who is driven to help tackle some of the industry’s most pressing issues. Robinson is on a journey to help hospitals continuously adapt to pandemic precautions, deal with healthcare staffing shortages, and improve the patient experience by humanizing in-room technologies.
“When you think about an elderly patient with impaired hearing, or a child or a worried family member, they’re all frightened; they’re overwhelmed, they need that human connection and reassurance,” Robinson says. “Outside the hospital, patients of all ages and capabilities today use their computers and devices for everything from banking to chatting with friends to ordering groceries. I know healthcare is slow to adopt new technologies, but there’s no reason we can’t use technology to give patients self-help tools and improve patient/provider interactions with a more human touch.”
LG Business Solutions provides access to the LG Pro:Centric WebOS platform on which MDM develops the Journey PX patient engagement system. MDM Commercial Enterprises, Inc., has been specializing in delivering appliance and technology solutions for healthcare, hospitality and fitness for more than 30 years. It’s also the country’s largest dealer of LG commercial products.
Scalable for any size facility, Journey PX is a cloud-based platform that elevates patient engagement throughout the entire continuum of care and streamlines provider team operations. The innovative platform deploys user-friendly interfaces for both patients and the care team, which can ease anxiety for the patient and save valuable time for staff. From pre-procedure reminders to in-room meal ordering to post-inpatient education content, Journey PX is a complete set of patient engagement solutions.
“With all the COVID precautions that must be adhered to, it’s not easy for care providers or family to pop in for a conversation, and this can leave patients feeling anxious, lonely and out of touch with their own care,” Robinson said. “Why not have the ability to remote into that 55-inch LG hospital grade television or that 43-inch flat-screen smart TV and have a face-to-face video conversation? With Journey PX, the patient simply uses their pillow speaker* (pillow speaker is not provided by LG and is sold separately) and TV control to navigate the system and communicate.”
Doctors, nurses, and other supportive care providers such as physical therapists, dieticians and pharmacists can use the system to schedule and confirm in-person or virtual visits. They can also offer their patients educational content about the care they are receiving to help them make informed decisions and understand their role in their longer-term, post-hospital healing. In this post-pandemic era, Journey PX Connect allows patients to video chat virtually seamlessly with providers and with loved ones without being in close contact with each other.
“Imagine a doctor is visiting with a patient in full PPE and communicating at about a 40% level of understanding; then the doctor leaves the room, goes to their office, takes off all that PPE, and then calls back into the room to follow up. The patient answers the video call with just a button push on the pillow speaker, and then sees the doctor’s smiling face,” Robinson said. “And with that simple connection, the patient experience, engagement and understanding went from being frightening and impersonal to an interaction with a high level of connection and mutual understanding.”
With the current shortage of nurses, healthcare facilities and providers are under enormous pressure to do more with less while also preserving a high level of care and safety. The Journey PX system is helping bridge the experience and knowledge gap that has resulted from large numbers of boomer generation nurses now retiring. From helping facilitate shift transitions by displaying nurse names and photos to providing a way for experienced staff to share patient-specific insights, in-room video communication is becoming a valuable tool for all involved.
“We’ve got to be able to help the nurses and healthcare staff; they’re all hurting. Beyond simply being shorthanded, staffing issues are problematic because experienced nurses leave with all their years of know-how and knowledge, causing an experience complexity gap,” explained Robinson. “Technology can help bridge that gap. We can have older or semi-retired nurses use the Journey PX system to make rounds virtually and cover a lot of patients and share insights with new staff members all through video — all from an office located almost anywhere. Experienced nurses can help extend resources, share knowledge and facilitate smooth staffing hand-offs with a reassuring human touch.”
Within Journey PX, the patient can see who is going to visit and other aspects of their care — such as reminding patients to go for walks and being pro-actively prepared for procedures or therapies. Another example would be in how the system can present the patient with a detailed, short video regarding their discharge from the hospital. After the patient has viewed the video, the nurse is prompted to check in with the patient — either virtually or in person — to see if they have any questions and make sure they understand all they need to do after being released.
Robinson sees this level of in-room, patient-focused technology as an efficient and effective way to provide four essential pillars for facilities to best manage their systems. With these tools, healthcare facilities can elevate the patient experience through engagement and communication; Implement operational efficiencies with streamlined and automated workflows; and enable revenue capture with time and cost savings and by fully leveraging available resources.
“With friendly, easy-to-use technologies, we can create information and workflows to help managers do more with less, free nurses from some of the mundane, and ultimately help set patients up for success,” added Robinson. “We don’t want any in-room complications or readmissions because of a lack of communication; that’s inexcusable. We’re working to better ensure that the staff and patients have some of the tools needed for a safe, healthy, healing experience. The work we are doing with LG to bring a human touch to the patient experience has been invaluable. They have been a great partner in helping us maximize care through the use of technology.”
*Pillow speaker is not provided by LG and is sold separately.
