Is Double Documentation Delaying the Delivery of Surgical Care?

Care delivery workflow disruptions are common for most hospitals and are not something to be taken lightly. While delays in any healthcare setting are problematic, they can lead to perilous situations when they occur in the perioperative setting.  

For example, in the case of emergency surgery, delays during any stage of surgical care can lead to compromised patient safety. Perceived patient safety issues can quickly become care quality issues that harm a hospital’s reputation and bottom line.  

Since the perioperative process often involves many moving parts requiring precise coordination between various team members, streamlining communication and data sharing is essential to avoid disruptions to care delivery.  

Anesthesia documentation is one key component of the perioperative process that is often treated as a standalone. In the absence of a fully integrated anesthesia documentation platform that provides continuity of data and streamlined workflows, delays in the communication of critical information can occur.  

The Problem of Double Documentation 

Surgical care cannot proceed until all team members have completed their perioperative documentation tasks, yet those workflow elements are often disjointed. When anesthesia documentation is siloed in one area and surgical documentation in another, nurses are then forced to tackle the task of sorting through double documentation. 

Switching from one system or documentation tool to another creates a massive waste of time. Storing information in multiple areas or duplicating steps in a healthcare workflow can make it easy to miss things like orders or create breakdowns in clear communication. This problem can be further exacerbated with paper-based systems where documentation can be easily lost or misplaced.   

By consolidating critical stages of perioperative documentation into one, digitally accessible platform, hospitals can take a crucial step in reducing perioperative delays and ensuring patient safety. 

Solving the Double Documentation in the OR 

By providing a platform that integrates clinical and anesthesia documentation into a single application, critical patient information can be communicated and shared with the entire care team. MEDHOST Perioperative Experience and MEDHOST Anesthesia Experience help accomplish that task by working in tandem, eliminating the need for duplicate documentation.  

Each perioperative team member has one source of truth for accessing and sharing critical patient data such as vitals, charting, and orders. All essential data is easily visible, accessible, and updated in real-time throughout the perioperative workflow. The seamless sharing of information can help reduce disruptions, improve patient safety, and improve the quality of care.  

To learn more about MEDHOST Perioperative Experience and MEDHOST Anesthesia Experience, please reach out to your Customer Success Executive today.