Optimizing acute care at scale

“Our goal is efficiency. We’re sensitive to every click and unnecessary interaction. Without integration, staff would constantly have to retype patient data. Our solution has to work fast and be intertwined with care workflows, especially when hundreds of patients are receiving consults every day. Otherwise, it’s slower and makes things worse instead of better.”

Ed Barthell, M.D.
Founder, EmOpti

Project snapshot

EmOpti success story

EmOpti improves patient flow in busy acute care facilities by using remote video consults to improve many care processes. In emergency departments, use for “tele-triage” makes the most out of a health system’s available staff across all locations. EmOpti’s EHR-integrated tele-triage technology optimizes staffing in emergency rooms for high and low volume days, saving providers thousands of dollars in payroll and lost revenue, and improving patient care and satisfaction.

Emergency departments have earned a reputation for less than stellar customer service. Patients expecting immediate care for their emergency often have to wait an hour or more to be seen by a physician. The longer the wait, the greater the health risk to the patient. Many simply leave. Some even die without being seen.

Accurately staffing acute care centers is challenging because the number of patients presenting at an emergency room can vary by as much as 50% each day.

EmOpti makes it possible for acute care facilities in the same network to “share” their clinicians through the power of telehealth. Within 10 minutes of arrival, patients connect with a physician in a remote command center via video chat on a tablet. EmOpti’s platform integrates with the EHR, enabling seamless sharing of demographic and vital data, rapid ordering of tests, and simplified admissions and discharges.

Health systems that run the EmOpti platform reduce patient wait times, improve patient experience and throughput metrics, and achieve a 10x return on their investment. EmOpti is expanding its telehealth offerings to more inpatient floors, further improving efficiencies and decreasing exposure.In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, EmOpti provided their flagship High Volume Telehealth Platform for ED Intake & Rapid Discharge for free, to improve throughput and protect providers from COVID-19. Redox integrations made the rapid 7-day deployment possible at each location.

EmOpti: Acute care optimization

Traditional ER staffing models lead to waste and unnecessary mortality

Emergencies are, by their nature, unpredictable. Emergency rooms do their best to staff appropriately, but the actual number of patient arrivals can vary by as much as 50% from what is expected. Despite the best planning, emergency rooms end up being overstaffed some days, and understaffed others.

Overstaffing raises payroll costs and keeps providers from operating efficiently at the top of their licenses. On the other hand, understaffing ERs creates stressful environments for both staff and patients. Patients who wait too long to be seen suffer greater health risks, higher morbidity, and longer hospital stays. Some patients simply give up and leave the ER altogether. In fact, the average rate of patients who walk out without being seen is 2.5% — that’s 600 walk-out patients or more each year for a busy ER. Patients who leave without seeing a doctor not only put their lives at risk, but they also cost the hospital in poor satisfaction ratings and lost revenue.

Current triage methods are imperfect and tech carts inefficient

One solution to get patients seen faster is to place doctors or physician’s assistants on the front line to manage triage. But the payroll cost to do this would be unsustainable for many hospitals.

Telehealth technology carts may be available for some ERs, but they are traditionally expensive, requiring extensive IT support and hours of training for staff. They may create shadow medical records because they do not integrate with EHRs. Instead of improving efficiencies, they add more work.

EmOpti technology optimizes staffing and reduces patient wait times

EmOpti makes it possible for hospitals and acute care facilities to offer ER consultations using a remote command center staffed by clinicians in the network. This solves the problem of one hospital in the network being too busy, while another is overstaffed.

Soon after patients arrive, they connect with an on-site triage nurse and a remote physician via a tablet computer. EmOpti’s EHR integrated technology enables the physicians at multiple tele-triage sites to quickly gather key medical information, speak with patients via a video screen, and implement the next steps of care, such as testing, additional consults, admission, or rapid discharge. 

Patients report a strong preference for face-to-face video technology over texting a doctor or speaking on the phone. Video also dramatically improves interpretation accuracy.

Not only are patients happier with video consults, but staff are able to work more efficiently and at the top of their degrees. An on-site clinician typically performs 6-10 consults per hour. But when the clinician works from the remote center, they can perform 16-18 per hour. Remote consultations reduce the time spent walking from room to room and eliminate the need to change personal protective equipment (PPE) after each patient.

Acute care centers who adopt EmOpti see huge ROI

• Decrease door to provider time from 40+ minutes to 10-12 minutes
• Cut patient Leave Without Being Seen rates in half
• Raise Press Ganey scores from 25% to 85%
• Reduce on-site labor costs by 20%
• Double the number of consults per hour
• See 10x return on investment within the first year
• Decrease exposure risk and unnecessary staff contact with patients

Integration key to EmOpti efficiency and provider adoption

With hundreds of patients requiring consult requests for everything from triage, language, social services, and behavior, EmOpti needed a clear way to manage the traffic and keep the workflows running as quickly as possible. EHR integration makes this happen.

EmOpti acts as a seamless extension of the EHR. The caregiver in the command center immediately sees the data entered by the triage nurse requesting the consult, such as the patient’s name, vital signs, and chief complaint. The data syncs between EmOpti and the EHR without requiring redundant entries, which helps with rapid queuing and decision making.

The EmOpti platform was developed so staff could easily learn the new system. In fact, the platform is so intuitively integrated with the EHR that nurses are ready to begin virtual consults after just three minutes of training.

Redox as integration partner helps EmOpti expand quickly to new markets

Barthell knew from the beginning that outsourcing integration would allow his team to focus on workflows, development, and implementation. EmOpti was one of Redox’s earliest adopters.

“Redox had the integration expertise, in a cost-effective and fast way,” he says. “It was one more set of technical skills I didn’t have to hire. The price structure was appealing and more affordable than what I could do internally. Plus, I liked the personality of the company.”

Initially attracted to Redox’s depth of experience with Epic, EmOpti now benefits from the breadth of Redox’s connections and 24/7 support.

Redox Nexus integrations also help EmOpti bring health systems online in as little as two weeks. “Redox continues to be efficient and fast. We had three health systems come online in the last eight weeks,” Barthell says. “If we did each interface integration on our own, it might take a year.”

Moving beyond ERs: What’s next for EmOpti

EmOpti adopters see profound improvement in the efficiency and safety of their emergency departments.

“Our flagship Emergency Department Telehealth Platform enables physicians to triage and treat patients remotely to speed flow, whether EDs are seeing normal volumes or even low volumes,” Barthell explains. “And in a continued climate of COVID-19 and infection surges, this approach helps EDs manage patient surges, reduce provider exposure to infected patients, and allow quarantined clinicians to work remotely and still contribute to patient care. Having Redox allows us to integrate the demographics and vital signs from the EHR to facilitate rounding and queue management for responding clinicians performing virtual consultations.”

Their success in EDs has EmOpti looking to improve efficiencies on other patient floors, too. Virtual rounding could be possible with a video portal in every treatment room and could reduce unnecessary entrances to the patients’ room by 50%.