Case Management plays a key role in supporting patient flow in a hospital. Not only are they dedicated to facilitating discharges, but they also work tirelessly to make sure that the patient’s care journey continues after they have left the hospital. This often involves searching for placement facilities, setting up home care, and ensuring that patients have the proper medical equipment to safely return home. Case Management is often impacted by external challenges that are out of their control, but they are still feeling pressure to get patients out as quickly as possible. This is not an easy task and unfortunately, sometimes discharges are delayed. With the use of TeleTracking, Case Management will be able to account for all the delays associated with discharges as well as streamline discharge communication between Nursing Units and Patient Placement.

This Reference Guide provides step-by-step instructions for the functionality needed to complete the designed Patient Flow processes and workflows specific to the department.

Launch TeleTracking and input your User Login ID and Password. Click the Sign In button.

From the Clinical Operations menu, click the PreAdmitTracking® or PatientTracking Portal™ option.

NOTE:

In the upper-right corner of the page, click the sign-out or end-session link.

End session - if you are signed into more than one session or workstation, select end session to end the current session.

Sign out - if you are signed into multiple sessions (or multiple workstations), sign out will close all sessions on all workstations.

Capacity IQ® PreAdmit is an application that will provide an overall view of discharge activity across the entire hospital. This view is most useful for Case Management staff that are covering the whole hospital, not just a few specific units. PreAdmitTracking® will also provide some valuable reporting tools in relation to Length of Stay metrics as well as Observation of patients. Below is an example of a Case Management PreAdmit view. Content and related functionality will be discussed in detail within this reference guide.

Patient Tracking Portal is an application that will provide discharge activity at a unit level. Unlike Capacity IQ® PreAdmit, this view works best for Case Management staff that are covering specific units and do not require a view of all hospital wide discharges at once. Below is an example of a Case Management Patient Tracking Portal view. Content and related functionality will be discussed in detail within this reference guide.

After logging into Patient Tracking Portal, choose the units you wish to display.

From the Unit Patients tab, click the magnifying glass next to the Unit field.

A list of Units will be displayed. Click on the desired Unit(s) to display a green check mark next to the unit name.

Once all units are selected, Click on Add > to move to the Order Units Displayed box.

Click on Save when finished.

NOTE:

Discharge planning serves as the foundation for systematic, effective patient flow. Expected, planned, coordinated, and completed patient discharges improve patient care, and satisfaction, and create stability in hospital capacity. Without effective discharge planning, a hospital would be unable to meet admission demand. Hospitals depend on Nursing Units and Case Management to facilitate discharges but keeping an open communication with Patient Placement is also a critical step in the process. Discharge planning tools will enable users to effectively update discharge activity and communicate to all areas impacted by patient discharges including Patient Placement and EVS.

There are two types of discharge statuses that a patient can be in, a Pending Discharge or a Confirmed Discharge.

Pending Discharge: an educated decision from the Nursing Unit or Case Management that a patient may be discharged within the next 24 hours. Pending Discharges are represented by:

Confirmed Discharge: a written order that a patient will be discharged. These orders do/do not automate the Confirmed Discharge at your hospital. Confirmed Discharges are represented by:

In Patient Tracking Portal, to set a Pending or Confirmed Discharge, click on the ST column for the appropriate patient.

Choose either Set Confirmed Discharge or Set Pending Discharge.

A pop-up box will appear confirming the action.

Update the Projected Discharge date and time to the best estimate. This is only used as a guideline to help Patient Placement know when the bed might be vacated.

Click Save

The patient’s ST column will now display the appropriate status.

The Milestones column will also now display for the patient.

Milestones are hospital requirements that need to be met before a patient can be discharged. As these Milestones are met, Nursing Units and Case Management can be set as complete, or if there is an issue with completing, a Delay Reason can be identified. This practice is an important part of discharge communication for several reasons. As Milestones are updated, this information can be seen by Patient Placement, Case Management, and the Nursing Unit staff. This transparency helps reduce the amount of phone calls between these areas regarding updates on a patient’s discharge status. Another benefit of using Milestones is the data that can be captured related to discharges. Each time a Delay Reason is identified, a record of the delay and the amount of time the patient was in a delay status is recorded. This is important for Case Management because it can help to explain why some discharges aren’t moving as quickly as they should. Capturing this data will highlight common internal and external barriers and allow hospitals to focus on process improvements for internal issues. Delays come in all forms and most are out of Case Management control. Family delays, nursing home searches, arranging home health, and transportation issues are all examples of barriers to an efficient discharge that are important to document using Milestones.

Click on the Milestone bar to open the Discharge Milestone box

To make a Milestone complete, place a checkmark in the box to the left of the Milestone name.

To select a Delay Reason, click on the drop-down menu for the appropriate Milestone. The notes column is a free text field that you can use if needed.

Click Save once finished.

The Milestones bar will now reflect the changes.

Hover over the Milestone bar to get additional details

NOTES:

If you set a delay, there is also an option to send an alert to a user or group regarding the delay. This is not required functionality, but it is very useful if you need to bring a delay to someone’s attention.

In the lower right corner of the Milestone box, Click the Send Notifications button.

In Search Users and Groups, find the user or group to send the message to

Type Message

If you wish to Include Patient Information in the message, check the box in the upper left corner.

Click Send

One of the biggest benefits of using TeleTracking is to take advantage of the robust reporting capabilities. There are two Quick Reports that are recommended for Case Management to focus on. The Length of Stay and Current Observation Patient Reports.

This report shows the Length of Stay (LOS) for all admitted patients from selected units whose LOS is greater than or equal to the LOS threshold chosen in the report parameters.

In PreAdmitTracking®, click on the Quick Reports Icon and select the Length of Stay report.

Verify the correct Campus

Select the Unit(s) you would like to include. If you want to run the report for the entire hospital, leave All Units selected. If you want to choose specific units, click on the magnifying glass and check accordingly.

Enter LOS Threshold-for example, if you want to show all patients that have been admitted for more than five days, you would set your threshold to 5.

Click, Run Report.

The report will open in PDF format and will display the following information grouped by unit.

This report will provide a list of patients that are currently in an Observation Status.

In PreAdmit, click on the Quick Reports Icon and select the Current Observation Patient report.

Verify the correct Campus

Select the Unit(s) you would like to include. If you want to run the report for the entire hospital, leave All Units selected. If you want to choose specific units, click on the magnifying glass and check accordingly.

Choose how you want the patient information to be displayed.

Choose how you want the data sorted.

Click, Run Report.

The report will open in PDF format and will display the following information grouped by unit.

There is an overall summary at the end of the report providing the total number of current Observation patients hospital-wide.

The Allowed Duration is configured based on your hospital’s design preference. The Compliance Time Remaining will display the time remaining before the Allowed Duration is exceeded. If you see a negative value, that is how long beyond the Allowed Duration the patient has remained in observation.