TeamWell
Requested amount from Knight News Challenge:
$200,000Total cost of project including all sources of funding:
$200,000Expected amount of time to complete project:
2 yearsBEFORE: Told that his wife, Bev, has been moved from the OR, Al rushes to her hospital room. She’s desperately thirsty. He remembers that liquids right after anesthesia may choke her, so he checks at the station, but only Bev’s nurse knows what’s safe, and she’s away. He feels powerless and stupid, wondering why he relied on the surgeon’s advice and the hospital’s ad calling itself one of America’s best – a claim he never verified.
TEAMWELL: Right now, no one needs empowering information more than Al.
Medicine has the concepts and the tools he needs, but not all hospitals do. TeamWell’s information empowers patients and their advocates – family members or friends – to be knowledgeable and responsible members of the medical care team.
AFTER: TeamWell's auomated call during Bev’s surgery reminds Al to go the ward to meet her nurse. Checking the TeamWell RoomPrep checklist together, they note that the commode needs to be retrieved from storage, and the nurse reviews what Bev can safely eat and drink right after surgery.
Al smiles ruefully and tucks the chocolate back into his bag as the nurse shows him the ice machine. He is relieved that the TeamWell.org review of the ward was spot on: the nurse treats him as a partner, and the tips about how to deal with the parking garage construction helped things go smoothly this morning.
He greets Bev as she arrives from surgery and knows what to do for her thirst. He reminds her to call the TeamWell IVR for an audio checklist if a nurse shows up with new medication orders. Later, he drops the postpaid RoomPrep checklist, with his checkmarks and other notes, into the mail. Email 3 days later confirms that his feedback is available via TeamWell.org.
0 commentsHow will your project improve the way news and information are delivered to geographic communities?
Structured, service-specific information for patients & advocates before, during, & after hospitalization
1. TeamWell’s central relationship is with patients and their personal advocates – in their dual role as reporters and information users – before, during, and after actual hospitalization. TeamWell provides information, in the form of reminders and checklists linked to core events (e.g. new medication, room transfer), that allows patients and care partners to play their part in ensuring that proper care is delivered and in taking a responsible role in the patient’s recovery.
2. The patients and advocates in turn provide checklist and other data which TeamWell compiles and publishes via its website. This allows prospective patients to compare local hospitals and gauge their progress over time in providing quality care and supporting patient teamwork.
3. Finally, TeamWork’s data compilations allow hospitals themselves to judge their progress. and real-time RSS feeds alert hospitals quickly when their checklist results drop below expectations – e.g. if a staffing shortage in a particular ward leads multiple patients to report problems with RoomPrep.
The information is real-time (for IVR audio checklist results) or close to real-time (2 day USPS lag when postcards are used). It is specific to particular hospital services (e.g. hip replacement), and the checklists are designed to focus on service elements that can be determined objectively and are central to patient care.
How is your idea innovative? (New or different from what already exists.)
P2P sharing, not records; quality-of-care focused feedback; cell/postcard interface; & local group support
TeamWell is patient-centered, and in thus has a kinship with Personal Health Record providers such as Google Health. It differs in that it is designed to support patient/care partner engagement during hospitalization, and information sharing among patients and between patients and hospitals of checklist results.
Compared to services such as Zagat Health, TeamWell feedback is specifically focused on good care outcomes, e.g. devices needed in the patient’s room post-surgery, rather than the room’s décor, structured and qualified by type of hospital service (since a hospital may be a leader for some services and a laggard for others), and collected and distributed in real-time.
TeamWell’s patient to patient aspects go beyond the Bonesmart.org's hip/knee replacement forum, Patients-Like-Me, and similar websites in three ways: users can interact via phone and postcard (for checklist prompting and reporting) as well as through the web; advice provided in the form of checklists is focused on the particular context (both the nature and phase of the hospitalization, vetted by patient care experts), and patient feedback is both more credible to hospitals – due to careful design of checklists – and easier for hospitals to use – since it is quantitative and can easily be extracted from the website, and stratified by time and service characteristics.
Finally, TeamWell is different from all of these services in that it relies on outreach and implementation through church-based caregiver groups, patient support groups, and other face to face social networks in the community.
0 commentsWhat experience do you or your organization have to successfully develop this project?
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