Cost Savings and Better Patient Education: A Win-Win

In a hospital or healthcare facility, whiteboards are the central communication station for current patient information, referred to by providers, nursing staff, patient support caretakers and most importantly, patients themselves. By using an enterprise-wide interactive patient care solution rather than costly manual whiteboards, healthcare facilities can reduce operating expenses and provide a better patient experience. Using an interactive rather than dry erase whiteboard, workflow efficiency can be optimized and streamlined with rounding notes, pain reporting and Care Team identification displayed, along with a range of other notifications and alerts.

A comprehensive interactive whiteboard system provides the ability to prescribe, assign and push educational healthcare content directly to patients. Patient Education, when managed efficiently and with easy access by patients, can have a demonstrable effect on readmissions; a key performance indicator used by CMS to measure (and penalize) healthcare facilities on quality of care. In many cases, getting patient educational content to patients consists of printing reams of paper handouts and providing them to patients during their stay and sending additional copies home with them at discharge. What isn’t often taken into consideration when considering whether to adopt interactive whiteboards in a healthcare facility is factoring in the cost of all of this printed material and its overall effectiveness in reducing readmissions and crisis events leading to emergency room visits. Large hospitals can print as much as eight million pages per year at a cost of $3.8 million. With a centrally managed system, hospitals can realize cost savings reduced by as much as 35-40 percent (or more) in total print volume, with a 30 percent reduction or more in toner and ink costs. That adds up to to a 25-35 percent reduction in externally sourced printing costs across the supply chain and significant cost savings.

Education Compliance with Interactive Whiteboards

Patient education compliance is vastly improved with multimedia education, reducing readmissions and the associated costs and penalties. More than 125,000 deaths occur each year from cardiovascular and heart conditions alone, and twenty-six percent of those deaths are preventable with educational content and compliance. One in three patients reported that patient education is the most-used service on their in-room television. Patient education completion can be increased by as much as twenty percent with an interactive component. An additional study shows that seventy-five percent of patients using on-demand education felt that condition-specific education provided through their interactive television helped them better understand their health condition. Interactive patient education provides facilities with a way to engage patients in their care plan, set expectations, and increase completion by twenty percent. This has a significant impact on reducing readmissions. In addition, patients can reduce their stay by as much as eight hours or more, and be released as much as three hours sooner with interactive and multimedia education assignment.

HCI’s Interactive Patient Solutions and Interactive Whiteboards provide an opportunity for healthcare facilities to reduce the costs of printed educational material by monitoring compliance and comprehension rates. Clinicians can assign and push education directly to patients to view on their in-room televisions, send reminders to complete assigned education and clarify questions patients may have while still in care. A comprehensive Interactive Patient Care solution can significantly reduce printing costs, promote patient engagement and reduce readmissions, resulting in significant cost savings.