When Seconds Matter: Improving Patient Care at Lafayette General Health | Dell (2024)

Blog

By Chhandomay Mandal |

This blog was written by Chhandomay Mandal, Solutions Marketing Director for EMC All-Flash Storage

When Seconds Matter: Improving Patient Care at Lafayette General Health | Dell (1)Lafayette General Health (LGH) is the largest hospital system in the Acadiana Parish, serving all of south-central Louisiana. With Lafayette General Medical Center (LGMC) as the flagship hospital, LGH also owns or manages five other area hospitals, nine professional centers, and several physician clinics. They have over 3,000 employees, and touch every aspect of healthcare in every area of the Acadiana Parish.

We recently sat down with their Chief Medical Informatics Officer, Amanda Case Logue, MD, as well as their IT Director, Michael Mickey, to discuss IT’s role in improving patient outcomes at LGH. What we learned was startling.

LGH uses Cerner as their Electronic Health Records (EHR) system. “It’s no secret that EHRs don’t really make you faster,” said Dr. Logue. “They’re great at collecting a lot of data, and helping improve outcomes. But they don’t necessarily make you more efficient. So this was just adding to our frustration. And we were hearing it from all of the medical staff, and we were feeling it every single day.

Dr. Logue told us her personal story about the situation. As an internal medicine hospitalist, she rounds on patients about four or five days every month, and sees about 120 patients in that time frame. As she moved around different areas of the hospital, she was very afraid to log out. “It would take you so long to log back in,” she said. “If you needed to step away to go see a patient, you would leave your desktop up, and cross your fingers that nobody took your space when you came back. Or if someone wasn’t paying enough attention, they started working in the station without logging you out! But it was so cumbersome to try to go through that process again, you didn’t want to log out.

Now add the “time to chart” issue on top of this time consuming login/logout process. “Time to chart” is the amount of time doctors and nurses have to wait on their end-point device for the EHR platform to pull up the patient’s treatment information. At LGH, it was 45 seconds or more!

Michael Mickey’s IT team at LGH transitioned their old systems to a new platform powered by XtremIO. They implemented a new VMware Horizon based virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) deployment relying on XtremIO’s high performance with consistently low latency, and inline all-the-time data reduction technologies.

The result: A spectacular patient care improvement at LGH. Analysts at Storage Switzerland have chronicled the enormous success LGH is enjoying in this case study. With XtremIO, Michael and team were able to reduce the “time to chart” from 45 seconds to 3-5 seconds.

LGH estimates that this reduction in wait-time is saving a doctor visiting 40 patients per day over 80 minutes. For Dr. Logue, this translates into over 6 hours of time saved per month, and she can focus more on her Chief Medical Informatics Officer responsibilities. LGH has hundreds of doctors and nurses, so you can easily envision the benefits of this VDI deployment with XtremIO.

Dr. Logue is so impressed with the XtremIO VDI deployment that she went on-camera narrating the patient care transformation at LGH.Check out the video below (and here).

Doctors, nurses, and patients weren’t the only winners thanks to the XtremIO selection. As Storage Switzerland points out, XtremIO also allowed LGH’s IT team to do a better job of servicing application development teams. A big challenge facing the team was the time it took to recompose the master image, something that happened frequently thanks to the 40 applications that the main image houses.

Before XtremIO, a recompose operation could take hours to complete. Now with XtremIO, it takes less than one-third of the time it took previously with more than 67% improvement. This allows the infrastructure teams to push new updates out to application development teams on a much more regular basis, making sure that they are armed with the latest applications and data.

Let me close with Dr. Logue’s own words:

We now have a speedier desktop that our doctors and our IT folks do not have to worry about. It works every single time. That has been a wonderful achievement.

Our OB physicians and our anesthesiologists like to open patients’ charts from homes to get prepared for their day, see what patients they have on their schedule, which ones are in the hospital. They also can come to the hospital, and pick up right where they left off, which is amazing for them. The doctors feel that they have a very user friendly environment. We have had a lot of instability, with a lot of parts of our health system, with growing technology, more and more hospitals to take on, more and more patients to see.

[XtremIO] is one thing that has been the most stable and reliable since we went live with it. And we are constantly complimented on it.”

Check out the details of how you can transform you applications environment with XtremIO here.

About the Author: Chhandomay Mandal

Dr. Chhandomay Mandal is the Director of Solutions Marketing at Dell Technologies. He leads solutions across artificial intelligence, analytics, business applications, VDI and HPC as well as industry-specific solutions for healthcare, media & entertainment, semiconductors and smart manufacturing.Prior to his current role, he led Dell’s all-flash storage solutions marketing efforts for desktop virtualization, server virtualization and private cloud. Dr. Mandal has been awarded 13 patents. He has a PhD from University of Florida, MBA from Indiana University, and BTech from Indian Institute of Technology.

When Seconds Matter: Improving Patient Care at Lafayette General Health | Dell (2024)

FAQs

When did Ochsner take over Lafayette General? ›

The health system says that the process of merging the two together began back in September 2019. The merger received approval from the Louisiana Attorney General's Office on September 4, 2020. Ochsner Lafayette General says they will anchor services in the region for the statewide health system.

What standards of care could you focus on to improve your patient outcome? ›

6 Ways to Improve Patient Outcomes
  • 1) Communicate With Patients. Communication is key to improving healthcare outcomes. ...
  • 2) Support Optimal and Evidence-Based Care. ...
  • 3) Focus on Preventive Care. ...
  • 4) Implement Inpatient Safety Practices. ...
  • 5) Utilize Technology. ...
  • 6) Utilize Data and Analytics.

What is one thing you will do to improve the quality of care and or patient safety in your practice setting? ›

Build effective communication and collaboration among medical staff. Create health prevention and promotion initiatives. Motivate change that drives improvement in healthcare. Use data to assess risk and identify areas for change.

Why does patient care matter? ›

Patient engagement is proven to improve health outcomes and adherence to treatment plans. As active participants in their own treatment plan, patients can impact the quality of their own preventive care and beyond. Reducing instances of anxiety.

Who is the chief nursing officer of Ochsner Lafayette? ›

Tiffany Murdock is the Senior Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer.

When was Lafayette General built? ›

Lafayette's first hospital was built in 1911; after move, it became Lafayette General.

What are the 5 steps to improving patient safety? ›

  • Maintain Patient Room Cleanliness.
  • Practice Proper Hand Hygiene.
  • Develop Optimized Discharge Process.
  • Keep High-Risk Patients Safer With Trained Sitters.
  • Apply UV-C Technology Creatively.

How to improve the quality of care? ›

Best practices for delivering quality patient care
  1. Show respect. ...
  2. Express gratitude. ...
  3. Enable access to care. ...
  4. Involve patients' family members and friends. ...
  5. Coordinate patient care with other providers. ...
  6. Provide emotional support. ...
  7. Engage patients in their care plan. ...
  8. Address your patients' physical needs.
Mar 6, 2020

How do you ensure good patient care? ›

Explore practical ways to improve patient care.
  1. Use Evidence-Based Practices. At the heart of quality patient care is clinical competence. ...
  2. Facilitate Open Dialogue. ...
  3. Put the Patient First. ...
  4. Promote Inclusivity and Equality. ...
  5. Empower Patients. ...
  6. Make Safety a Priority. ...
  7. Streamline Efficiencies. ...
  8. Provide Ongoing Care.

What is the most important thing in patient care? ›

Communication is key

You and your staff should try to communicate with the patient and the caregiver of the patient. Referring to them by their name, asking them how their day was, followed by questions about their concerns and complaints can go a long way in building rapport with the patient and their family.

What do patients value most? ›

In absolute terms, 69.9% of patients considered outcomes very important, while 58.1% rated experiences very important.

What are two important patient responsibilities? ›

Patient Responsibilities

Patients are responsible for providing correct and complete information about their health and past medical history. Patients are responsible for reporting changes in their general health condition, symptoms, or allergies to the responsible caregiver.

Did the CEO of Ochsner step down? ›

Warner Thomas, who as CEO of Ochsner Health led an aggressive expansion throughout the region and helped grow the health care system into Louisiana's largest, is stepping down to take the top job at a California-based hospital network.

Is ochsner lafayette general a level 1 trauma center? ›

OLGMC has the busiest emergency department in Acadiana and handles the highest level of trauma in the region as a Level II Trauma Center.

What was Ochsner Baptist old name? ›

Formerly known as Southern Baptist Hospital, it was founded in 1926 by the Southern Baptist Convention and led by Dr. Louis Judson Bristow beginning in 1924 during the building of the hospital through 1947 when he retired as Superintendent of the hospital.

When was Ochsner founded? ›

The Ochsner Clinic was founded on January 2, 1942 in the midst of World War II and was the first group medical practice in the Deep South. The founding partners understood the importance of research and education.

Top Articles
Latest Posts
Recommended Articles
Article information

Author: Mr. See Jast

Last Updated:

Views: 5669

Rating: 4.4 / 5 (55 voted)

Reviews: 94% of readers found this page helpful

Author information

Name: Mr. See Jast

Birthday: 1999-07-30

Address: 8409 Megan Mountain, New Mathew, MT 44997-8193

Phone: +5023589614038

Job: Chief Executive

Hobby: Leather crafting, Flag Football, Candle making, Flying, Poi, Gunsmithing, Swimming

Introduction: My name is Mr. See Jast, I am a open, jolly, gorgeous, courageous, inexpensive, friendly, homely person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.